Welcome To Looking For The Long Ride

Halloween Of A Different Sort

2011-11-06T16:14:36Z

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!

My Mind's Awash With Thoughts of Life and Living

2011-11-04T17:56:09Z

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!

For Mike: A Memorium of Sorts

2011-11-02T21:19:43Z

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 me I thought had gone missing.

When I would hear tales of friends high school reunions I would often wonder whether the guys and girls from my alma mater had ever gotten together and planned a tenth or a twentieth get together. It seems I had fallen off the radar and for all intents and purposes, that was just fine with me. What would there be to talk about anyway. Would I be honest—whatever that means—and let it all hang out or would I just sort of blend in and enjoy the blast from the past ride remembering the good times over a beer or two.

Anyway, the post card led me to a website that had been set up to gather us all together again. I logged in and quickly searched for a few names that I remembered and was shocked to find my youthful best friend listed under the classmates who had since departed. Under Mike's name and picture was no additional information other than the fact that he was dead.

And if the truth be known, I'd not given any of that much thought during the past few decades of family, work and the rest of what I would call enjoying what each day has to offer. Sandi and I have been married for 33 years, have four great kids and two fantastic granddaughters with another on the way. We've had our mountain tops and valleys and lots of living in the spaces in between. There have been some trying times—times of heartbreak and times of pure joy. We have spent our fair share of time in emergency rooms and doctors offices and have seen dear friends get divorced. On the other side we have lived long enough to spend quality time with our kids in their own homes for Christmases, Thanksgivings and many, many trips to our favorite beach hangouts.

I can't say for sure why I am so moved—if that is the right word—by the fact of my friends demise. I guess I have always thought about those people as having had a good life just like the one that I am currently living. Not about things that take us from life, but about things that give us life.

I don't remember ever meeting Mike, just that he was always there in some way. As kids I would either be at his house or he would be at mine—although that is not really reality either. His family life was much simpler than mine—I did everything I could do to get away from my house and his parents seemed to be of the sort that welcomed any and all to theirs. As most kids did, we had sleep overs where we would sneak out after dark and wander the streets looking for something interesting to do. Mind you, this was before pot and coke and crack—we just thought it was a big deal to be out and about without our parents knowing what we were up to. We'd walk to town and hang out at the "White Castle" and I guess pretend that we were grownup—nobody wanted to be a kid during the late fifties and early sixties.

We had our bikes and paper routes and ball teams and bowling on Saturday afternoons. We had pocket money and that was all that really mattered.

I think that by the time high school rolled around I was part of one crowd and Mike was a part of another and so our paths didn't meet as much except during the long summers at the local lake side beach which was just a few block away from both our houses.

His parents finally divorced and I don't remember much about us after that time. I was somewhat college bound and Mike worked in a beer and wine store that had a great deli. I made new friends and moved away and that is all that I can say about that.

I have always had a semi-philosophical attitude about all that Post Huron stuff. As Bob Dylan said, "We were both just one to many mornings and a thousand miles behind". That is until today. Today I found out that Mike is gone and I guess with that information a part of me has disappeared as well. Granted, it's a part that only exists in my shaky memory of those days but none the less real in a semi-surrealist sort of way.

I was thinking today that seeing someone live out something in a movie seems much more real than actually having that same type of experience in "real-life". Our lives don't have a moderator or a sound track moving us from one event to the next and explaining the complexities in between. We live and then we reminisce about what we have lived. It is an abstract sort of awareness of time and space as if we were never really a part of what we experienced. Been there/done that doesn't do our lives justice.

In the end I guess I will leave it to the poets to explain to me what took place on that day in time. In the meantime, I will go on enjoying my wife, kids, grand-kids, etc. all the while reminding myself that not everyone has it as good as I have.

Enjoy the ride.

Manufactured Landscapes

2011-09-11T14:40:17Z

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. My theory was (and still is) that if you have the lead sentence then the rest of the story will build itself around it.

Just the other day I found myself creating lead sentences for potential blog entries. I was thinking about a movie I just viewed called "Manufactured Landscapes" which I thought was a movie about photography when I placed it in my Netflix queue.

The documentary is about photographer Edward Burtynsky and records his travels around certain parts of the world observing changes in landscapes due to industrial work and manufacturing. In a nutshell, his photography shows how China's economy has rapidly expanded in order to produce the products America and other countries think they need. To this end, massive cities have been built around this manufacturing ideal, which in turn employ millions of people who sit around all day and night building cell phones, Ipads, computer chips and the like.

In order to get the products delivered, large ocean going ships are built and container cities are formed where products are stored before being shipped out. And then, in an ironic twist, these ships, when they have served their purpose, are dumped on the shores of Bangladesh and like cities to be taken apart, piece by piece, by the unemployed locals of all ages. As you can imagine, taking apart freighters is not a Betty-Crocker-clean type of job. This type of work would not be allowed in the United States mainly because of the toxic substances found aboard these ships.

So, what I thought was going to be an artistic adventure, turned out to be a "Mother Jones" on steroids type of event. That is not to say that I might not watch it one more time before turning it in—I am sometimes a glutton for punishment.

In other news and in closing: another sentence that I was working on in my head revolved around a trip I took to Africa several years ago. One of the people I traveled with, an ex-marine and frequent visitor to Africa, had a great camera and encouraged me to use it to take pictures to chronicle our trip. He said that if I saw a picture, just say the word and he would stop in order to facilitate my fancy. Only as things turned out, he began to get more and more irritated every time I would mention a picture opportunity. When I called him on this his reply was, "Everything is a picture to you!"

And that my friends is really the way things are. There are endless possibilities in living everyday. However, I don't think that being consumers is what life is all about. As I grow older I am beginning to see beyond the Matrix and into the nature of real life. As the economic storm continues it is our job to embrace change and position ourselves for what the Creator of the universe has in store not simply go about each day as business as usual.

As much as I mostly enjoy the life I find myself in this day, I know there is a lot more to understand and live out in the days to come.

Enjoy your ride!

Times Fun When You're Having Flies

2011-09-07T14:09:13Z

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.

Much of what I have done "thoughtfully" during the past few months has been a more personal journey into understanding what makes Terry Henry tick. I wouldn't call it navel gazing but I do have an introspective nature and a thought-life that keeps me pretty busy most days.

Having said that, there are certainly many points of departure that are presented to me at this moment.

I could talk about how the church we were a part of for several years imploded and left us wondering about what's next for us in this arena. We haven't left the faith—we're just not "going to church" each and every Sunday morning. Our spiritual journey continues in fellowship, around dinner tables, in the marketplace and at occasional conferences. Somehow it seems more "real" this way even if the "home base" is always moving.

I could talk about recent beach trips with the entire clan and of grand daughters that have brought a joy into my life that almost can't be described. Being a grand dad is such a pleasure.

And thinking of families, one of the delights of being the father of four great kids is those times when we are all together for a weekend of dinner, deck sitting and drinking a great bottle or two of wine. It is hard to describe just how precious those times together are and how much Sandi and I look forward to them.

I could also talk about planting corn and potatoes, beans and tomatoes, garlic and cilantro and lettuce, lettuce, and more lettuce. And after all these years of gardening, I am still learning a few new tricks. One trick is now much better your garden will do if and when you plant a cover crop such as crimson clover in the fall. In the spring, you mow it down, compost the plant and then till the rest under and let it sit for a week or two before you plant. The cumulative effect is that the cover crop deposits a lot of nitrogen, the stuff that makes plants grow, into the soil. I have never had such great corn as this year. Plus I have a couple of rows of sweet potatoes to harvest in a week or two as well.

Part of what makes Terry tick comes from knowing that I have a "father" who cares for me and is blessed when I operate out of my created uniqueness and gifting. Just as no two snow flakes are the same, each of us is an "original". My authenticity comes from partnering with the creator of the universe. In Him I live and move and have my being!

And while I don't always live in this awareness or operate from this center, my goal in life is to be fully alive in all my potential—to allow His love to wash over me and in so doing, clean out all the cobwebs of anger, bitterness and betrayal that, like weeds in my garden, pop up every so often and have to be pulled out one by one.

In closing I am reminded that it is a long way from Boston to San Francisco. But once the train is up to speed it takes less and less effort to keep it running. Inertia has been broken—it remains to be seen what results the potter will have with the clay. Hopefully something useful will be formed out of all of this.

Enjoy your ride today and ........!

"Great" Expectations

2011-03-09T14:45:00Z

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 came home and with pen and ink on paper tried to sum up the gist of that thought process and what follows is the substance of that endeavour.

Each day presents itself to us with an attached list of expectations a mile long and two miles wide. Among this list is a line item in how we expect to be treated by those significant people we work and spend our leisure time with. When these people don't meet or exceed our perceived expectations, we are presented with an opportunity to be offended by them. This offense is called "The Bait of Satan" by Christian lecturer John Bevere. If we take the bait, the offense will produce fruit that is rotten even before it ripens. And the scale of offense shifts according to the person in question—since we have low expectations of a sinner and or street person, if they spit in our face we are not so much offended as we are able to rationalize the action. If a minister doesn't visit us in our time of need however, because we "expected" more, we can easily be offended by this action.

Bevere says that we can "take" the offense and all its ugly ramifications or let it go in forgiveness with the latter choice leading to a healthy life and the former leading us into sin and bitterness towards the offender.

In my mind expectation/offense and personal affirmation/validation are connected in a molecular way.

Life as we know it and have experienced it is neither as good or as bad as we think it is or remember it being.

We have our successes and failures in terms of a life that is linear in nature. In other words it follows a straight time-line.

The idea at hand is putting into practice what we have learned about expectations and our need to be validated or affirmed by others.

In the original article I juxtaposed this thought (being affirmed by others) with what we know God thinks about us and how we can take that knowledge to the bank and deposit it and make withdrawals against that account when needed. In other words God affirms that we are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14).

Yet, my life, and I would suggest most of our lives have been lived with the expectation of affirmation and validation from our co-workers, friends and/or significant others up to an including our spouses and parents. Life has definitely taken its twists and turns and in many ways has not turned out the way we might have expected or envisioned it.

If we are currently more satisfied with our lives than less, it would suggest to me a success in coming to terms with the substance of our days. And that the peace we feel is a result of putting life's lessons into practice. Yet even when we understand the principals of growth in a specific area, we are often hard pressed to say that we are always successful when it comes to applying these principles to situations that arise on a daily basis.

Our need for affirmation and validation is a case in point. Everybody likes to have a pat on the back from time to time and to hear that we are special or have done a good job. The list is endless. The need to be accepted is universal and basic to our human nature. However, as we have lived out our years, the need for "external" validation/approval should have lessened or significantly diminished. As we have found, expecting affirmation from others often results in disappointment when we don't get from these people what it is we think we need to feel accepted and therefore good about ourselves.

When our expectations in this regard are not met, perhaps even squashed, we experience disappointment with our lives which can and often does, lead to our being offended by these self-same people. In other words, when we don't get what we feel we need or expect form others, maybe even being wounded by them in the process of relationship, we can become offended, which when unchecked or dealt with can lead to anger and hatred. This is the bait of Satan in full bloom.

It would seem to me at this point that a successful life journey would produce a person who doesn't need the approval of others in order to feel whole and at peace with themselves.

Having said all of this, I am not sure if this will ever be fully realized in my life or yours. What I can say is this: the energy we put towards allowing ourselves to be affirmed by God is well worth the effort—it works even if we only gain ground in this area an inch or two at a time.

Our Stories

2011-03-08T13:33:00Z

"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 development—where everything seems to finally come together within the last few pages or frames upon the screen. Charles R. Swindoll, in his famous quote about our attitudes when faced with circumstances beyond our control wrote, "I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it ... we are in charge of our Attitudes.”

The older I get the more I begin to understand that if we aim for nothing, that's what we will get. This being true, then why not aim high instead of low, far instead of near, towards the impossible instead of the merely doable. Instead of settling into a routine of just making it through the day why don't we begin to live a better story—one that brings adventure back into our lives and excitement into our daily existence.

I myself have found it much to easy to spend my evenings checking my e-mails and Facebook feeds, watching television and otherwise biding my minutes and hours until bedtime. During the reading of Miller's book, I was reminded of a time, early in my marriage with Sandi, where we both looked forward to those long winter hours when we could sit and read, listen to music, do crafty things together and then head to bed with the satisfaction that comes from a well-rested soul. I can't remember much more about those times we shared before we started having kids other than the fact that it took a lot of time to stoke the wood fire and we really enjoyed our time together. I guess I should have written it down. I am short on facts but long on feelings.

As I log this post into cyberspace, I am reminded of the many stories in the Bible that have shaped the way I/we look at life and the circumstances that we are sometimes dumped headfirst into—situations we have no control over. One of my favorites is when Joseph ended up in jail because he fled from the sexual advances of his master's wife. To our modern minds, his story sucked big time for several years until we are brought to the end where his position and preparation in Egypt brought his family out of famine and into feasting.

I have often wondered what his attitude was during all that happened to him after being sold as a slave by his brothers. I guess the answer lies in the fact that in one of the final scenes we are shown he told his brothers that what they had meant for harm, God had meant for good. No doubt he had several years to think about his answer.

Anyway, like it or not, we are consciously or unconsciously living out our stories.

In my story I realize that I am lucky (if such luck exists) to be alive. Last night I had a dream that reminded me of a real life event that happened when I was a young teenager. All I can remember of the dream is that as I was waking, I saw myself floating down a rapidly flowing river and the person floating next to me had just popped to the surface with a big smile on his face.

During my teen years I lived in Port Huron, Michigan where the very, very wide Lake Huron funneled into the quarter mile wide Saint Clair River. It was at this juncture that the Blue Water Bridge crossed from Port Huron into Sarnia, Ontario. Suffice it to say, all this water coming into a very confined space created a very rapid current. And even though it was supposedly off limits, we would jump into the water at this point and float the several miles to Marysville, where one of my friends mothers would pick us up. It was a lot of fun and none of us ever thought of the fact that we could easily drown or be sucked into a freighters wake. To this day I am not sure what we told these innocent mothers that we were doing.

There are certainly other stories I could tell at this point which would demonstrate my "lucky to be alive" statement.

I guess the real point is none of us know how many more months or years we have left to live out whatever story we are currently living. If we have the ability to "edit" the story we are in, what would these edits look like. We can certainly begin to look at our circumstances with a different attitude as Chuck Swindoll would attest.

I know that somewhere in what I have said, there is a balance to be had. Or as Mark Twain put it, "The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all".

And that is my ride today...hope yours is going well and your bike is well oiled.

A Walk In The Wild

2011-02-16T18:12:00Z

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 like my Barnes and Noble's and the plethora of used book stores and thrift shops that seem to thrive in larger communities.

One thing about Cary that I really, really like is the availability of walking trails and wilderness areas that are in and around the Cary area. There is even a walking/biking trail that runs from where our daughter Jessika lives right past where our son Joseph resides. It then rambles on for several miles past his house and the fancy park/play area that adjoins it.

Suffice it to say that there is a lot to do when we go for a visit.

But that is not what started this thought process in the first place—rather is was the two long walks Sandi and I took while we were there and the resulting peace of mind these walks seemed to provide.

I remember when Sandi and I first meet 34 years ago walking was one of the activities that seemed to keep our relationship fresh and in order. We'd walk through neighborhoods and wilderness areas with about the same amount of satisfaction and enjoyment. Of course walking provides a backdrop for conversation and is actually a fine way to stay in shape—mentally as well as physically.

After we moved to North Carolina in 1978 and before our children were born, we almost lived in the woods that surrounded our house. The two or three hundred acres we lived in the middle of had been logged years before and the logging trails that wove throughout the woods were a treasure trove of adventure. As we were mostly self-employed, we had plenty of time for adventure walks on a once or twice daily basis. We had our favorite walks but often would tackle new trails that we would pass by. You would not be far off in saying that these walks were almost artistic in their impact on our lives. We'd always return home in better shape mentally than when we had begun—as art is therapeutic, so were our walking adventures.

We would often find rocks and shells and pieces of nature that when brought home would pictorially adorn the walls and shelves of our mountain home.

But life does take it's twists and turns and even though Sandi and I still take walks almost every evening in good weather, these walks are mostly around our neighborhood and the paved roads that run a mile or two this way and that. We still live in what would be considered the country, but our normal walks are not close to the time we spent last weekend in the middle of a several hundred acre park where the only sounds you heard were the leaves rustling, the birds chirping and your feet scuffing the well worn trails.

I have come to conclude that these types of walks allow time for your mind to clear itself of cobwebs and any idle thoughts of impatience, dissatisfaction and/or low self-esteem that we seem to deal with in our hectic day to day existence. In other words, these types of walks bring rest to our wandering souls and help us become re-charged and energized. Our creative juices can begin to run again. Nature walks simply seem to wash the palette of our minds clean—ready to accept another days thoughts and images.

Why we don't do more of it, one can only wonder.

Anyway, on the road trip back to Boone, I caught myself being challenged creatively and was actually excited about the prospect of what the next few days might present. I had been filled up by being emptied out—seems the oxymoron.

Nevertheless, I will continue to walk and talk with my wife and encourage you to do the same—with whoever is available in your life. Spring is coming and the possibilities are somewhat endless. And that's as good as it gets.

Meditations on a trailer sitting in an open field.

2011-02-14T21:05:00Z

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 is that there is a car parked nearby so I assume the trailer is occupied.

Since there is another trailer within 50 feet I'd have to say it's a small neighborhood.

Have you ever noticed that trailers are mostly always painted white—except for those silver Airstreams.

I can't imagine that anyone would willingly choose to live in a trailer—this thought because I have always viewed trailers as transitory not permanent residences.

Trailers are not even called trailers anymore—they are now known as "mobile homes" even though most, if not all are mounted on some sort of foundation.

Since trailers are manufactured off site and are hauled to a plot of land by roadway, they are shaped like a hotdog—long and skinny.

A "double-wide" is just another name for two trailers that have been bolted together. Double-wides are a step or two below a pre-fab or manufactured house which sometimes look similar in size and shape.

My grandmother lived in a "mobile home" in what was then known as a trailer park. Her living room was on one end, the kitchen and dining room in the middle with the bedroom at the other end. In between was a bathroom on one side and a laundry room on the other separated by a small narrow hallway. I believe there was a back-side exit door in the bedroom.

I remember staying with her during the summer when I was young. This was during the white wonder-bread-years and the trailer would get so hot that the bread would almost melt in the cupboard. Of course the butter had to be kept in the fridge or else it melted on the plate.

I wonder if living in a trailer alters the way people think about space, movement and how they fit into the overall workings of the universe—no wide open prairie here.In other words, it is much like the saying that you are what you eat: perhaps we are defined by our architecture as well.

Reconciliation Part Two

2011-02-04T14:39:00Z

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 lot of positive feedback which in turn led to us leaving as well.

Within this dynamic, some longstanding relationships were lost and some were in turn strengthened. There were attempts made on our part to restore some friendships that had been damaged as a result of various falling outs over the years we attended this fellowship.

This was pretty much the focus of that 2007 article which can be found at this link: Click here!

As I mentioned then, Reconcile is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as:

1. To reestablish a close relationship between.
2. To settle or resolve.

I have recently had the idea of reconciliation come back to me in terms I think we can all relate to.

In talking with a friend the other day, I came to the realization that many of us may still be waiting for the "light" of "acknowledgement" to come on inside of those who have wounded us. We may still be waiting for that phone call or knock on the door which would lead to our "offender" apologizing to us for how they once treated us. After this, all would again be well with the world and the fracture in the force would be repaired. Just like in the movies where nothing is left hanging at the end of the 2 hour playing time.

Yet life is very much not like the movies or our favorite television shows. We continue to carry wounds way beyond what is really necessary and our thinking that these situations will be completely healed at some point is not based in much reality.

Another friend confided in me that every time he sees certain people from his church past, he gets all tense inside and feels really uncomfortable around them. This says to me that he has unresolved issues that may never be taken care of. Especially if we go on thinking that these "other" people are going to wake up one day and see the error of their ways and be completely repentant towards us.

I have come to the major conclusion that if these aforementioned people really thought that there was something wrong about their approach to life and relationships in general, they would not have treated us badly in the first place. Most of these people don't seem to sit around wondering much about anything that might be askew with their personalities. Just like most bullies don't realize they are in fact bullies. The fact that they push people around is just the way things are and not something to be concerned with—not a whole lot of self-analysis going on in other words.

I guess I have reached the point where I am tired of talking about or trying to figure out why these things happen and am ready for God to bind up my broken heart. (Isaiah 61:1)

Don't get me wrong, I would still welcome that knock on the door or phone call. But realistically, that is out of my control and probably not going to happen. I hope to find it in myself to fully forgive and begin to live, not out of wounding or brokeness, but out of grace and abundance.

And that's my ride for today.

Redemption

2011-01-19T20:49:00Z

A couple of my favorite things to do are visiting my son and daughter who live in the Cary, NC area and while there visiting a couple of local, used book stores and a humongus Barnes and Noble's. Mostly in that order with a mocha latte added at some point. I occasionally stumble upon a rare find or two—which is well worth the trip in and of itself. Ordering online from Amazon is not nearly as rewarding.

My latest trip was last weekend and while there, I picked up several books of poetry by writers that I newly discovered. One of these was a book by Li-Young Lee entitled "Rose".

In the forward to Li-Young Lee's book, Gerald Stern makes this comment: "What characterizes Li-Young Lee's poetry is a certain humility, a kind of cunning, a love of plain speech, a search for wisdom and understanding….a devotion to language, a belief in its holiness…and a moving personal search for redemption."

Somehow, the last seven words of this forward caused me to ask myself just what it is the reviewer meant by this. What is a "...personal search of redemption" and why am I so suddenly struck by these words. Is it because, in the midst of my "born-again" redemption by Jesus, I am still (we are still) trying to somehow work things out as an atonement for the guilt that we feel about our lives.

Redemption, as defined by Dictionary dot com is a noun which means:

1. an act of redeeming or the state of being redeemed.
2. deliverance; rescue.
3. Theology . deliverance from sin; salvation.
4. atonement for guilt.
5. repurchase, as of something sold.
6. paying off, as of a mortgage, bond, or note.
7. recovery by payment, as of something pledged.
8. conversion of paper money into specie.

...and that my friends is a lot of weight put on this 3 syllable noun.

Paul mentions in one epistle that we "...work out our salvation with fear and trembling" yet the concept of our redemption by Jesus couldn't be any clearer. We were stained by sin and deserved punishment (from a legal standpoint) for them and He took our punishment for us. He died that we might live.

A week or so ago, I was pondering two short words that both begin with a "g"—Guilt and Grace.

This thought revolved around thinking that most motivation in our culture is based on making us "feel" guilty about something so that we are motivated to work harder in order to please the motivator and/or assuage our feelings of guilt about it.

Guilt is partly defined as:

a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc., whether real or imagined.

I know by experience that none of us like to feel bad about our personal performance be it work based or socially derived. Making someone feel bad about something is not necessarily going to make that person change his or her behavior.

On the flip side of this however is Grace and learning to motivate change within an individual from a perspective of love and understanding.

Most of us as parents have relied on both methods in raising our children. Though we didn't mean it, our love and acceptance of our children was not fully "agape" in nature but rather in the fact that we did hold back some love when our children's behavior was not up to snuff. In other words, it is still hard for a redeemed person to fully operate out of that sense of redemption and the life it should provide—both to us and to others.

I guess the bigger question is why do I still feel a sense of guilt about my life and how do I fully appropriate the fact that Jesus eradicated my sin debt. When do I start feeling so good about myself that no matter how I am treated (praised or abused) I am not overly swayed by feelings of pride or inadequacy.

I guess the fact that I am still asking these questions and looking for answers is a good thing—it means I am still a part of the human race—alive and kicking. Yet I am seriously looking for that place of peace, that place of abiding in rest—the fact that I have not fully arrived at my destination or the answer to my questions—is a part of the journey, a part of the ride that we are all on. One if by land and two if by sea. C U later.

Unfolding Revelation

2011-01-18T18:41:00Z

You can rest assured that each of our life journeys have been more or less unique to us. There may be some overlap in shared experiences, but overall, it is our shoes that we have filled and no one else's.

And what I see today is that each mile that we have walked brings with it some understanding of the purpose of the mile before it. In other words, it seems we are never quite current in our overall assessment of where we have been and why. In this sense, revelation comes to us in bits and pieces over time—and that only if we are tuned into anything that is happening to and around us.

It is like I have heard said about hearing God—He is always broadcasting but we are not always tuned into His channel.

Knowledge comes in pieces as well. Scripture tells us that it is, "...line upon line, precept upon precept".

So, it is with interest that I think about a conversation my wife and I had this morning in bed as we found ourselves both awake at about 5am.

The conversation seemed to revolve around having and nurturing a daily relationship with Jesus/God and how we fill our free days with lots of other activities rather than pursuing one of the most important.

This line of conversation led us to remembering our early house church experiences and how fulfilled we felt being a part of a local church body in pursuit of the Holy Spirit.

Which brought us to the point of how hard it is to find what we experienced as early Christians in today's hustle bustle world.

After having attended a church we were actively involved in for 20 plus years, we left there for another local expression, which in turn lasted for about 3 1/2 years. So, for the past 4 or 5 months, we have not attended (been a part of) a local church service.

Granted, we are still a part of the "church" but are not fellow-shipping with the brethren on a weekly basis. We get together with Christian friends, but have not found that place of corporate worship and service that we are now missing.

What we are looking for is a place of abiding where we are a part of what is happening, rather than being passive participants sitting in pews or folding chairs—a place where what we say matters and the feeling is of a family rather than the customary clergy/laity divide.

Sandi likes to dance and use beautiful flags in worship and I like to use my musical giftings in order to usher in the majesty of Holy Spirit awareness.

Sounds like we are between a rock and a hard place in terms of finding a local expression that meets our needs—or is life-giving—in other words. Not that we are always looking to be fed—we have opportunity to serve others—but mostly when we are filled can we in turn be used to fill others.

I am sure there is more to this train of thought than what I have time for right now. Suffice it to say, the dialogue has begun and as our revelation unfolds, we will end up in the very place that we need to be.

Goodbye Twenty Ten

2010-12-31T17:01:00Z

It seems almost a shame to have a blog and not post something related to the year ending or the new one beginning. We all know by now that New Year's resolutions hardly last beyond the first few weeks and that real change comes from deep within not from a feeling you get about going to the gym a little more often.

If anything, I would have to say that my ship has a little more water in it than it needs. In other words I feel like I have been more influenced by my culture than I have influenced it.

Not that my light has been completely hidden under a bushel but perhaps I have gone through a pack and a half of matches keeping it lit during the past year.

I began this blog in November of 2006 to allow the creativity—that had mostly dried up during my 20 year sojourn at a local church—new freedom. In retrospect I realize the church I was a part of was not that much different than many of the secular jobs we find ourselves in.

In addition, there was a lack of appreciation on the part of leadership, for those that served the body in the myriad ways that happens locally. It was a big deal to say that GOD created each of us unique, but on a daily, experiential level, this belief was not lived out. Sound familiar.

It was certainly not the "church" that Jesus died for.

And yes, in saying that, I am also saying that I perpetuated some of what I now realize is religious bullshit.

My how we have grown.

When we left the aforementioned church, another was begun to take its place, and that expression lasted a few years until it diminished to 2 or 3 couples. From 60 to 6 in under four years—isn't it supposed to be the other way around.

Be that as it may, Sandi and I have taken to sleeping late on Sunday and getting together with our Christian friends on covered dish occasions and such. Not bad but not totally fulfilling either.

However, late 2009 and most of 2010 found us focused on our family. Our daughter Lydia had serious complications late in her pregnancy which required our attention and prayers. Yet our grand daughter Kaydence has gone from skin and bones preemie to a healthy 18 pound one year old. She is a blessing and a blast to baby sit.

Son Joseph and wife Amanda had Ayla Jade several weeks later by c-section (not the easiest way to go) and we have spent time in their house and fully enjoyed her as well.

Jessica, our oldest and her husband both lived through significant job changes in 2010 and are now better off than they were before.

All in all I see that not much in life comes easily—at least later in life. There are always situations to work through and and things to deal with. As scripture tells us it is a gift from God if we can enjoy our days and the jobs we have and the fruit of our labor.

I am also aware of the fact that I had to die to many of the things I thought I knew about the church in order to be free to actually see the pattern Jesus set before us. And though I am not totally on the other side of all of this, I have made many positive strides during the past year.

I can say that I am a little more understanding (except maybe in traffic) and calmer than in previous years. I could just be tired but I think more is at play than that.

I am grateful for my family, my job and my health.

There is more that I could say—I could get deep and wordy but that would not serve.

What I do know is that you can't believe that it is good to stop and smell the roses if you never take the time to do just that.

Facebook Faces

2010-10-22T14:24:14Z

Social Media is all the rage these days. Everywhere you look, you are apt to run into an invitation to connect with your past, present and sometimes future (ie: Match dot com).

As an avid newspaper reader (USA Today mostly) I often find myself amused by the articles about Facebook, Twitter, My Space, Linkedin, etc. that speculate on their respective influences, both good and bad, for our modern lives.

I will have to admit, I am often one of the first to investigate new trends that involve the internet. I remember the days of AOL and dial-up connections at a speedy (I jest) 300 BPS. It took hours to send a small file to a printer and the cost of the next generation modem was astronomical.

Yet I digress!

Today's high speed DSL connections have opened us up to a new world of technology. We now buy online, download music, movies and TV and use to Internet to keep in touch through e-mail, IM and social media sites and blogging.

If you are like me, you have more friends than the people you actually really know and relate to on a daily or weekly basis. I have often found myself clicking through pages of photos of people I barely know, just to pass the time away (don't cha hear the whistle blowing).

If it wasn't for the fact that most of our "friends" want us to look at their lives, we'd be classified as voyeurs.

Having said that, let me say this: it is fascinating to see how some of our friends have changed over the years. Some people I once knew 30 years ago, don't look anything like they did way back then. There may be a vestige left of the person we remember physically, but often the change in appearance is rather drastic. Sometimes, the person looks almost like they did, only older—almost like those CSI computer aging programs we have have seen on TV. Add a few wrinkles, white hair and a little weight and Wah Lah, we have a match.

In thinking about all this, I remembered a piece about faces written by Rainer Maria Rilke that I have always thought to be brilliant. So I did a Google search and found it all typed out for me and now I share it with you.

Enjoy your ride today.

Faces
Have I said it before? I am learning to see. Yes, I am beginning. It's still going badly. But I intend to make the most of my time.
For example, it never occurred to me before how many faces there are. There are multitudes of people, but there are so many more faces, because each person has several of them. There are people who wear the same face for years; naturally it wears out, gets dirty, splits at the seams, stretches like gloves worn during a long journey. They are thrifty, uncomplicated people; they never change it, never even have it cleaned. It's good enough, they say, and who can convince them of the contrary? Of course, since they have several faces, you might wonder what they do with the other ones. They keep them in storage. Their children wear them. But sometimes it also happens that their dogs go out wearing them. And why not? A face is a face.
   Other people change faces incredibly fast, put on one after another, and wear them out. At first, they think they have an unlimited supply; but when they are barely forty years old they come to their last one. There is, to be sure, something tragic about this. They are not accustomed to taking care of faces; their last one is worn through in a week, has holes in it, is in many places as thin as paper, and then, little by little, the lining shows through, the non-face, and they walk around with that on.
   But the woman, the woman: she had completely fallen into herself, forward into her hands. It was on the corner of rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. I began to walk quietly as soon as I saw her. When poor people are thinking, they shouldn't be disturbed. Perhaps their idea will still occur to them.
   The street was too empty; its emptiness had gotten bored and pulled my steps out from under my feet and clattered around in them, all over the street, as if they were wooden clogs. The woman sat up, frightened, she pulled out of herself, too quickly, to violently, so that her face was left in her two hands. I could see it lying there: its hollow form. It cost me an indescribable effort to stay with those two hands, not to look at what had been torn out of them. I shuddered to see a face from the inside, but I was much more afraid of that bare flayed head waiting there, faceless.

New York, New York

2010-09-23T01:37:26Z

It's no secret amongst our family and friends that Sandi and I love to visit New York City every couple of years. We first visited together in 1991 or 1992 when we tagged along with a group from our local college, Appalachian State. It was some kind of advanced English class going up to tour the city and there were several seats left on the bus they had leased. I think it cost us $40 bucks a piece for both ways. We stayed in a loft owned by the university on the lower west side and slept in bunk beds in a dorm room setting. The rest of the group stayed someplace else, so it was really kind of private, in a low-rent sort of way. We don't remember what we did with our children, but we do remember that we had a great time.

I had lived in the city in the late sixties and was familiar with the basic north/south, east/west street layout and so brought a confidence to my wife about our wandering around one of the greatest and most overwhelming cities in the world.

We have since been back five times with last week our most recent trek into the world of Manhattan.

Our plan is simple: go for about 4 days and make it a point to have one or two things we really want to do. That way our trips are always a success and fulfilling. We always make plans to see a Broadway show and visit at least one of the major art museums. We hit TKTS, a discount ticket operation, as soon as we get into the city and normally our first night is spent heading towards the theater district (TImes Square) and taking in a show. This year, we saw Mama Mia, a play that has been around for at least a couple of years. It is a musical set to the songs of ABBA, a pop group from the mid-seventies. And this is where I say there is a good reason why it has been on Broadway for so long—it is simply a fantastic show—a full 2 1/2 hours of energy that leaves you feeling like a million bucks. The tickets are not cheap—even at half price—but are well worth it.

This year, in addition to Mama Mia, we visited MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) and viewed a special exhibit of Matisse paintings from the early 1900's. We took the Circle Line boat tour of lower Manhattan (a real tourist type of thing) and saw the city, and the Statue of Liberty in a whole different way. We ate at our favorite Vietnamese restaurant, had lunch in Little Italy, did the Canal Street shopping thing and walked nearly 10 miles a day.

One of our destinations is Sandi's favorite—a trip to Lilac Chocolates on 8th Avenue. Their dark chocolate is some the the best in the world—very addictive. One of my favorites is to wander around the Strand Bookstore on Broadway Avenue. This year I bought four books of poetry that hadn't even made it to the shelves—they were stuffed and stacked on a rolling book-shelf type of thing which is probably used to store the books until there is space on the main shelves. I only wish it wasn't so far away.

Did I say we walked nearly 10 miles a day! In the process of our time in the city, we spent time in Central Park, which is another world on Sunday. It seems most of the roads are closed to car traffic and the streets throughout the park are filled with thousands of joggers, bikers, roller-bladders, walkers—locals and tourists alike—all enjoying the fantastic fall weather that each day presented to us.

When we needed a break, we took in a few films that will never find their way to Boone, North Carolina. The Lincoln Plaza Theater only shows films that have won awards—we saw Heartbreaker, Cairo Time and Get Low during three of those we-need-a-real-rest times. All I can say is that each film was great and if you get a chance, check them out.

The past two times we have visited New York, we have stayed in a hotel in Newark, NJ which is only a half a mile walk from the PATH train into the World Trade Center site in downtown Manhattan. The twenty minute ride into NY is a small price to pay for the significant savings of staying in Newark. Maybe when we are rich, we can stay in Mid-Town and have a place to retreat to when we are tired in the afternoon—although the Lincoln Plaza seems to welcome us with open arms.

At the pace we go, 4 1/2 days is just about enough. With our internal computers re-booted, we returned to our country mansion, where you can actually hear yourself think and the katydids are friendly all evening. Hopefully we will still be healthy enough in the future to visit the city again—until that time adieu!

Today's Headlines

2010-08-05T15:48:24Z

I was struck last week by a large headline in one of the daily newspapers that I pass by on my way to the USA Today paper box. The big block letters on the front page almost screamed, "Can We Win In Afghanistan?"

I didn't take time to read the article and what it related but the very question itself set me on a course of thought and reflection that is still in the process of coming to a boil in my ever active imagination.

My first thought was this: If we can't win then lets get out which in turn led to—if we can't win then why not?

Just for the record, I am not very active politically—I know a little bit about a lot but not very much about any one democratic process or structure.

However, I do know that our form of government is a Republic and not a Democracy—we are governed by representatives that we "elect" every so often and the hope is that these paid reps will do what is best for us and our country.

And I guess that is the point that I am getting to in a round-a-bout way. I feel that we, as a people group, have almost totally lost control of our government (for and by the people), our food production and our stewardship of mother earth.

From a simple and biblically logical standpoint, if we can't win the war in the Afghanistan, then we need to immediately get out before any more or our nations' men and women are put in harms way.

Luke 14:28-32 reads:

"For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it?

"Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him,

saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.'

"Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand?

"Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.

I am no biblical scholar but the implication seems pretty clear—don't start something you can't finish.

Not only this, but recent reports of high suicide rates among soldiers, mental illness discharges, drug and alcohol addiction and just plain wearing out bodies because of multiple deployments says that the system is not working on so many different fronts not to mention whether or not we should even be in-country.

I guess the older I get, the less I think about the idea that the USA needs to come to the rescue of every nation that is in political turmoil.

Then again, this whole Iraq and Afghanistan thing is much more complex than we have been led to believe. Once we realized that we were never going to find Bin Laden or nuclear weapons, we should have said see you later—instead we have spent literally billions of dollars on a war, within a country, for a people group that we will probably never see eye to eye with.

Muslims and Christians are like oil and water—historically and realistically—two very separate groups of people, each thinking that the other group are infidel. Books have been written about the divide between these two religious groups. And because of time and energy on my part, we are not even going to delve into the fact that these eastern countries are governed by hundreds of thousand year old tribes rather than some form of united representative government.

Yes, this whole conflict is so wrong on so many different fronts. Just thinking about it has frustrated me and in turn made me aware of the acute sense of impotence many must feel. How can we the people change public policy—if that is even what this is. How can we meaningfully make our voices heard in the board rooms and congressional halls of our vast country.

And in closing, what response is appropriate for a man of faith—a man who believes in a living, active God and savior. How shall we then pray into this situation and our collective sense of betrayal and frustration?

Those and many others are questions I am pondering on this very long and twisted ride.

The Digital Age

2010-08-04T22:53:15Z

I won't be the first to say this and I won't be the last: the digital age sucks big time—the digital age is the greatest thing that has ever happened to us.

A certain dichotomy.

As I read an article in the current USA Today about the fact that stockholders don't have confidence that Barnes and Noble Book Sellers can compete in the "digital" age, I was at once appalled at the ultimate consequence of this belief and/or train of thought.

I will admit: I have an Android phone and I think it is just below the invention of sliced bread. I can make regular phone calls, respond to text messages, check my e-mail, listen to music, watch videos and surf the web on this amazing device. This little phone, which can fit in my shirt pocket, is a more powerful computer than the Mac SE that my wife wrote her first book on.

However, the changing landscape that this digital age has brought to the forefront is not necessarily in my best interest.

Contrary to a lot of what is happening "content" wise from an internet standpoint, I am an old-timer in my approach to the world.

I still like going into a bookstore, buying a cup of coffee and looking through the shelves for a book or two that I might be interested in. I still believe that God takes delight in what I do on a daily basis and will accompany me through my travels and highlight stuff that I might be interested in. I know I just got a little spiritual for some of you, but bear with me.

The physical act of walking through a bookstore, interacting with the employees, and walking away with a physical find is still a process that sets my soul into overdrive.

The computer, however fast and slick the browser and experience can be, can never take the place of interacting with real human beings. You cannot feel the pages of the book across the wireless. There are no smells or physical sensations associated with the URl that I have accessed through my desktop or mobile device.

In a nutshell I would say that we have been compromised.

Last week, on a trip to Wrightsville Beach on the North Carolina coast, we took a travel stop for coffee and browsing at our "local" Barnes and Noble Bookstore in Winston-Salem. After putting in my coffee order, I took a left to the poetry section only to find that it wasn't where it had been anymore. I went to the desk and asked about it and was pointed to the shelf or two that now housed this particular collection. When I began to scan the shelves, I was acutely aware that the section had been almost demolished from what I had come to expect from it. We are talking about stopping at this particular bookstore every time we passed through Winston over the past 8 to 10 years. Without fail. The fact that there is a Macaroni Grill (a favorite restaurant) that shares the same parking lot is inconsequential. This is what you do when you venture off the mountain that is Boone, North Carolina.

The staff was very nice in trying to diffuse my questions as to what had happened to the poetry section I had come to know and love.

"I know we re-arranged things, but I don't think we sent a whole lot of books back", one clerk I talked with said. "You know, poetry doesn't really sell all that well", was her retort when it looked like I wasn't going to let a dead dog lie (sorry). My response was perhaps ill advised, but when I told her I knew quite well that there was at least half of the section gone, she could only shrug and walk away—knowing that another day awaited her and things would be a lot better once I left.

So, not to be denied my find, I went to the periodical section and picked the latest Mother Jones magazine and took it to the checkout counter—where upon I told the guy behind the register what I had discovered (big secret) and that this discovery did not bode well for our collective culture. He replied with a "...I could have told you that several years ago". With this retort ringing in my head, I paid my bill and as I walked out of the store, silently mourned my loss—a loss which most can not share—and the realization that this might be the last time I stop by this particular bookstore on my way to anywhere.

Indeed—it is the end of an age as I reckon it. I don't want a Kindle, an I Pad or any other digital device wherein I might read my latest literary find. I want "hands-on" all hands on deck. I want sights and smells and turning physical pages. I want the hunt and the satisfaction that comes from discovering the next great poet or author. I want human interaction.

Is that asking to much.

For the stock holders, it just may be. Is the writing on the wall or are we the ones who control it.

I really don't want digital delivery—I want paper and ink and all that that entails.

Yet we really can't say how long that will be an option.

It is a self-fulfilling prophesy—if they don't carry what I want and I am forced to do business online, it will just hasten the demise of what I have come to love and understand—and that my friends seems to be the way things are going.

An Amazing Journey Into Understanding

2010-07-14T13:44:32Z

To say that I am constantly amazed at the information about life that we pick up in bits and pieces along the way—even in our later years—would be an incredible understatement.

It seems that if we stay connected and keep our ears open, something of interest will inevitably pass our way.

As I have mentioned several times before, vegetable gardening is something that I have done ever since Sandi and I moved to North Carolina in 1978. Our collective journey has been both humorous and highly satisfying. From those early five inch tall corn plants that we didn't fertilize, right up to this years strawberry harvest and beyond, we have continued to learn the process of growing your own food.

This year, we bought a small greenhouse and began to grow our own plants from seed—a process that we have tried and failed at several times before. It is not that the information for success is not available—it is just spread out over many different sources and people.

What motivated us to plunge in again and get our hands dirty is as simple as it is complex. We have depended on other people for many years to provide something that—given the right political/economic atmospheric conditions—might not always be available.

Big seed companies have created vegetable hybrids that will not continue to produce after their own kind—so saving seeds from your garden year after year has been largely lost to most gardeners. This has spawned a small but growing movement towards open-pollinate/heritage seeds that can be collected and saved year and year and traded with others.

I guess it may be called sustainability.

Anyway, during the process of growing our own plants this 2010 gardening year, I came across a factoid which in turn can be discussed far beyond the scope of this current blog post.

And the fact is that we may be doing things backwards in terms of how we end up growing anything. The culture that I live in is mostly devoted to using chemical and/or organic compounds to feed our plants. This, rather than feeding the soil and letting the soil feed and grow our plants and vegetable crops. It seems that building up our soil for this and future generations has taken a back seat to using 10/10/10 to create a short term green-revolution which is destined to deplete our top soil and increase our dependence on the big oil companies who create these types of chemicals.

What I am saying is that I became aware of the fact that we have slowly lost the ability to really be "self-sufficient" by accepting this approach to gardening and overall farming. We are dependent upon the big growers to provide our local stores with plants, which we put into the ground and feed with stuff also produced by others, ad infinitum.

According to a recent article in "Mother Jones" magazine, we are losing topsoil at an alarming rate and with this loss the ability to continue to provide food for all the people who are alive today and will be born tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Once this topsoil is gone, it is very difficult to replace. Composting is one way to sustain our gardens and our planet, but this is not practiced on a scale that will change much of anything.

One is reminded of the great dust bowl of Woody Guthrie's day.

"The Dust Bowl or the Dirty Thirties was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936 (in some areas until 1940). The phenomenon was caused by severe drought coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops or other techniques to prevent erosion." (Wikipedia)

The so-called "Green Revolution" which saw a consolidation of family farms into a corporate conglomerate and the overall increase of food production due to chemical fertilizers is now leveling off and beginning to see decreased crop yields.

I guess what I am trying to wrap my head around is the thought that as a people group, we have more or less lost a measure of control over our future by our dependence on big business to provide our meat and potatoes. Kids today think that milk comes from the grocery store and hamburger from Mickey D's.

Prophetically I believe that the time has come to take back some of what we have given up—even to the point of creating "top-soil" farms that can begin to create the very stuff that will be blown away due to farming practices that continue to feed the plants and burn out the soil. Soil which in turn leaches nitrogen into our streams and lakes and depletes the oxygen which that part of the food chain lives on.

I think the most frustrating part of all this is the fact that while we can change the way we do things on an individual basis, changing the way our culture approaches this whole deal is a different matter. Just as you can't legislate true morality, how can we hope to affect change in an arena where we have very little control.

Until we begin seeing television commercials that shout "Save our Topsoil" we will have to continue learning the secrets to being self-sufficient and accumulate the knowledge that is part of the oral tradition from which our ancestors learned to plant and harvest. To every thing there is a season. Have a good ride today.

How Time Flies When You Are Busy Living

2010-03-13T00:21:00Z

In talking with a friend the other day who asked me why I had not been blogging, I realized that it has been at least a couple of months since my last posting. The reasons why I would slack off that much after almost 3 years of being relatively consistent are as many and as varied as the pot holes in our Boone roads after what has been a long, cold, snowy winter.

No, I have not lost interest in expressing myself on the various thoughts that pass through what is left of my imagination. It is more like the desire to expound on my life and those around me has been in hibernation and waiting for the thawing rains of spring to bring forth new vegetation.

In the meantime, my daughter Lydia and my son Joseph have welcomed new baby girls into the world, making grandparents for the first time out of Sandi and me.

Lydia's baby, Kaydence Faith was born in the early hours of January 1st in Forsyth Medical Center in Winston Salem. Joseph's baby, Ayla Jade, was born to him and wife Amanda on February 10th. Both are doing well and the stories that will be told about both pregnancy's and labors would take several pages to describe. Each child is a miracle and a blessing and will forever change the way each family lives.

Several weeks ago, we all got together and celebrated a baby day. It is that kind of day where pictures are taken with each parent and grand parent and cousin and child from every conceivable angle and direction. Most of us guys can take about an hour or two of this before we start looking for a newspaper or magazine to read in the other room. Suffice it to say, it was a weekend to remember.

One of the joys (there are many) of parenthood is knowing that your children have grown up with the ability to find happiness, earn a living and in general, take care of themselves. Sandi and I are blessed with three adult children who are doing all this and more. In addition, we have Laura, a rising senior, still with us. They are all a blessing to us in their individual ways and as a family we have shared many special times.

Being a part of our kids special times is something that doesn't have a price tag. Sitting at your son's or daughter's table and breaking bread (having a meal) is a moment in time that makes all of the various times and seasons of raising children worthwhile.

It is a blessing beyond compare.

In other news I have been getting back into painting and am having a lot of fun playing my various tin whistles. I have been reading Mother Jones and Utne Reader and have been provoked and challenged by many of the articles I have read. Much of what they publish doesn't make it into the mainstream or else goes way beyond what we have been led to believe about current events and the world around us.

Did you know that a decision was made by corporate America/corporate world after one of the world wars to create a system of planned obsolescence in order to help our economy grow. We now have $29 DVD players that can't be fixed, etc. and have to be replaced every few years as a direct result of this decision. Conversely, there is a movement that would like to see more things manufactured that can be fixed and or repaired and that last a lot longer than a couple or years. And the bottom line is that most people probably don't care.

I guess you get my gist—life is going on all around us and we would do well to get in the boat and start paddling.

I think Jonatha Brooke said it best in a song called Crumbs off her 10 Cent Wings album:

And you say, that you have come as far as you are able
But you're not far from the tree

And you say, you're OK, but you live your life like it's over.

We really owe it to ourselves to keep connected with this miracle called life. Have a great ride today!

We Made It Through The Ice Storm of the Century

2009-12-27T17:21:00Z

Normally, living on top of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina is a pleasant adventure—we get all four seasons, mostly moderate winters, cool summer evenings and impressionist fall foliage. Spring on the other hand is always a little iffy—it sometimes doesn't like to let go of winter and what often happens is you wake up one day and its summer—without a lot of what is supposed to be in between.

Sandi and I sort of "homesteaded" in 1978 and have been here since.

This past fall was one of our very best with Indian summer lasting well into mid-November—some of my best bike rides were in October and November.

However, with all that is fantastic about living along the Appalachian Blue Ridge, there are definitely some occasional drawbacks.

Like this past Christmas weekend.

Our local weather wizard Ray (Rays Weather dot com) forecast freezing rain to begin about 9pm Thursday evening and last into Christmas day with temperatures then rising to about 41 degrees. Icy accumulations were supposed to be in the quarter inch range and we stored up some water and went to bed that evening with not a lot happening weather-wise. Forecasting weather in these hills is often very difficult and we have seen the "storm watch" come and go many times with nary a whimper. So, when bad weather is forecast we take solace in the fact that it often doesn't happen.

Such was not the case this time.

At about 3am we began to hear the snap, crackle and explosive pop of tree limbs breaking off under the weight of the freezing rain which seemed to come pouring all around at an even 32 degrees farenheit. As with strong winds, sleep is almost impossible at that point and after tumbling and turning for a couple of hours, both Sandi and I got up, made coffee, took showers and waited for our daughter Laura to get up for breakfast and Christmas morning.

Branches were breaking and falling out of our trees every few minutes or so and as Sandi and I watched the debris pile up, we wondered how long we had until our electricity went down. We would see a flicker every now and then and I ground a lot of coffee beans during this period, just in case. And I am glad that I did.

At about 9am, the lights flickered one last time and that was it for our power. I went downstairs and got the Aladdin lamps and prepared the Coleman stove and we waited until Laura awoke and had our present opening without electricity.

I did forget to tell you one thing—the previous Thursday and Friday, the high country had been the recipient of 14-20 inches of snow and I had been on a business trip that week leading into the weekend. I was able to fly into Greensboro airport just as the snow began and after visiting my daughter in the hospital in Winston-Salem, got a motel as the roads to my house and beyond had been closed due to heavy snow accumulations. All this to say, my Y2K generator was in the shed (now destroyed) and not where it should have been for it to be super useful when the power went off the following weekend.

Such is life! We had a pleasant Christmas day and got together with our neighbors for dinner they had prepared on their wood stove. Aladdin lamps produce a white light equal to a 60 watt bulb and Sandi and I read for a while after dinner and then went to bed early.

Then next morning, I got up to more broken branches and pulled the generator out of my busted shed and hooked up a couple of extension cords and we were then able to charge our phones. power the fridge and freezer and eventually watch a Netflix video that had come on the 24th. I heated water on the Coleman stove in the basement for coffee and we finally made it into town (the roads were clear except for lots of broken limbs) for more water, gas for the generator and a quick $15 shower at a local hotel.

The electric company told me that it might be Tuesday before we would have power and like it or not, we settled into having a good attitude about the whole thing.

Sunday morning, I got up, started the generator, heated water for coffee and dishes and was prepared to cook scrambled eggs on the Coleman when lo and behold, the lights came on and life slowly returned to what we now call normal. Just in case, we flushed the toilets and proceeded to get the house cleaned up and ready for another day—this day with power.

After breakfast, I fueled up the chainsaw and hit the front and side yards to cut away the tree limbs that littered our landscape.

At one point, the estimate was that 18 thousand people were without power and thanks to Blue Ridge Electric and all the other co-ops helping, that number is significantly smaller today.

It was an adventure and we made it through—and I might add with mostly good attitudes. I thought we had lots of damage but have heard of much more. It will take weeks to move all the debris out and I still have half a tree on part of my roof. I don't think it did a lot of damage because there was still 12 inches of snow to break the fall. Maybe I will be able to get my son in law to come over latter today and we can cut it up and get it off the roof without doing any damage to to roof. I have taken lots of good pictures for the insurance and hopefully that won't be a problem.

All in all, we are fortunate—we made it through and are ready for the next round of snow tonight and later in the week.

It has been an interesting ride and I am going to rest for awhile before doing any more.

Observations On A Cold Thanksgiving Day

2009-11-27T13:00:00Z

Late November
and the crows are being noisy
as they fly from tree to barren tree
in groups of two or three
making their Caw / Caw / Caw sounds
to no one in particular

In my neighborhood - it is otherwise quiet
with everyone warm indoors
waiting for dinner to be served.

I smoke a Mote Cristo and
feel the weather turn quickly
from a long Indian summer to
the first days of wintery gloom.

The clouds overhead are heavy and gray—
with small patches of blue scattered in between.

My creativity has been lost for months in a blur of busyness—yet
I feel a thread of sentences forming on top of
my consciousness as I search for a pen and some
white paper to jot down these errant impressions.

It feels good—but I am afraid this burst of energy is brief.

I've spent the morning catching up—cleaning the dirty bird-feeders
in hopes of bringing them back to feed.
They are fun to watch but require lots of dedication and money—the late
summer left them plenty to nibble.

Everything else around me is either dull green or shades of rusty iron.

A certain peace surrounds me in this moment of reflection— the crows
are still talking and dancing from bare limb to bare limb.

In The Beginning And After - Part Two

2009-10-24T12:19:00Z

In contemplating my most recent post, I am acutely aware of the fact that any conversation based on creativity can take us on many different paths—some direct and to the point—others crooked and winding and through the woods we go.

For instance, to create or be creative doesn't have to be something we do but can rather be something we are or strive to be.

Some people never produce anything that can be listened to or hung on the wall, but use their creativity to problem solve at their job or avocation.

I am reminded of the book "Practicing the Presence of God" by Brother Andrew. In it he talks about his connection with God and the fact that he felt closer (read "more alive") to God in the kitchen peeling potatoes than in his 8 by 10 room on his knees during the required daily devotional times at his monastery. Herein lies the rub: perhaps living out our faith in a moment by moment scenario is the most creative we can ever be. To be fully aware of the moment we are in and choosing to live in that supernatural realm with God, our lives a sacrifice to Him and to all those around us, is perhaps the greatest dance that will ever be seen on the earth.

And really, isn't this what we have always aspired to—something that transcends our very flesh and blood, seventy years on this earth, mortality. At least for those of us who have chosen the Christian path to walk.

In the recent Marhta Graham dance company performance I alluded to already, a single female dancer performed one of Martha's early dance/theatre pieces from the late thirty's. It was called Lamentation and the featured dancer was alone on the stage, sitting on a plain wooden bench, covered from head to toes in an elastic, tube like, body stocking. All we could see was the painted white face of the dancer and her feet and partially her toes and hands. Then, to the sounds of some minimalistic piano playing, the dancer moved to and fro within the stocking creating a sense of a caterpillar trying to figure out what he/she was doing inside of the cocoon.

Watching this "dance" take place gave me the feeling of being pushed and pulled through a life we barely understand. I also got the picture of a person trying to figure a way out of this mortal coil and all the bizarre movements we make throughout our lives in trying to figure things out. A picture was also painted for me mentally of a culture trying to move from primitive to modern—the birthing, in labor-like jerks and convolutions giving me a picture of us collectively straining to make something better of ourselves.

Having said all that, I must admit that I have never felt like I have lived up to my potential, Christian or otherwise. I still get angry at times and live a somewhat semi-disciplined life that always seems to be reaching for something just beyond my grasp. Living a life at its creative best is almost like never using a credit card and getting into a debt that has to be paid off in monthly increments. I can see the wisdom in not buying something before I can afford it, but the pull of the world to purchase is a very strong pull indeed. And in working to pay off the debt, we become a slave to a system that only seems to reward those who follow the rules, pay their bills on time and we end up losing the energy to be creative.

I have probably lost you at this point. What I am trying to convey is a thought—no, a state of being—wherein we always think the best of one another—where we exercise patience, and approach every situation that life brings to us with wisdom and humility—where we lend and never borrow and no matter what happens we can say like the apostle Paul, "I have learned to be content in all things".

This is not better living through chemistry or some sort of hyped up transcendental meditation or prosperity doctrine thing I am talking about. This is about a life that we learn to live in the center of a very creative father who only has plans to prosper us and not leave us as orphans.

Even though I haven't made it yet, I still believe that this creative state of being is possible—a place where if our cake doesn't take, we eat pudding we have made instead. The glass is always half-full instead of the other way around.

In The Beginning And After

2009-10-23T22:07:00Z

It is interesting to note those times in our lives when we are full of creative ideas and yet have no earthly idea of how to express any of them—or even being aware of what is floating around inside and yet knowing that it to will be forgotten as easily as an early morning dream.

One thing that this social networking thing has going for it is the proliferation of information of all kinds up to and including books people are reading and music they are listening to.

I was checking out my Facebook home page a month or so ago and saw the name Imogene Heap mentioned in one or two posts. With my interest peaked I logged into my I tunes account and sampled her music and was so taken by her creative freshness (at least to me), I purchased my first album online. (Ellipse)

This was a major step for me: I am decidedly a hands on type of guy—I love to wander bookstores and the thought of a physical CD of music to open and touch is still my preference. It's a social thing and what causes us/me to get out of our/my shells and participate in a real—not an imagined, virtual—life.

However I digress. Last night Sandi and I went to a dance performance featuring Martha Graham's company. It was kind of a retrospective show and not one of the best I have seen but never-the-less set my mind to thinking about all the creativity that is loosed on the earth at this present time.

Martha (if I may be so familiar) was an individual who pushed dance into a creative, emotive, theatre-like dimension in the early 20th century and whose path, once opened, was copied somewhat by most of the dance company's that were to follow. And in this creative stew she wasn't always embraced by the powers that be—anyone who dares to challenge or change the status quo has this hurdle to leap.

As I was driving home from work tonight I had this thought: In the beginning, God "created" the earth. In this instance, the Hebrew word "create" means to: to shape, or to fashion. Based on James 1:17 (Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights...) I believe that God gave Martha Graham the creative ideas (gifts) that she then turned into dance theatre and the rest, as they say, is history. Whether she was aware of this supernatural transaction, I have no idea—it works in spite of what we know or believe—somewhat like gravity itself.

Expressing ourselves creatively, then, gives God a glory and a substance in the earth and in our lives that He alone deserves.

Yet I am most aware of the fact that the busyness of life often steals our creative expression and we find ourselves passed out in front of the latest episode of Monk or NCIS—wanting to redeem the time but somehow powerless to the grinding effect each day has hidden underneath its' surface.

I am thrilled to find those people who have pressed through and found that place of freedom and release: Robert Burridge, Abigail Washburn, Sarah Jarosz, Mary Oliver, The Weepies, etc.

A common denominator among many of the artists that I gravitate towards is their acknowledgement of spiritual, godly things but also an awareness of the fact that as humans, we have a hard time making God our all in all—our beginning and our end. In other words, while we are looking to be fulfilled in the Creator, we are still earth bound and checking some things out. And in this attempt comes our music, our dance, our art and our poetry. The artistic urge seems to come from us not being completely comfortable in our skins and is formed/birthed in our desire to understand our purpose in the overall scheme of things.

So—maybe I have said a lot or a little—I have tried to express a thought that seems to keep forming in my mind.

And that too is a ride for another day.

365 Days Later

2009-09-11T13:30:00Z

It was one year ago today that my wife Sandi and I traveled into lower Manhattan via subway from Newark, New Jersey, where we were staying in a very nice Best Western Hotel. We had arrived the day before on the Amtrak train from Raleigh, North Carolina—we were well rested and more than ready to hit the city streets and have a wonderful few days of vacation adventure.

It was 9/11 and seven years after the twin towers had been attacked. The mood in Manhattan was a little less hectic than normal or so it seemed as we made our way out of the Path train tunnel underneath what used to be the Trade Center. People were already gathering for some of the day's memorial events and we hung around for a few minutes and soaked in the energy that was building before we took Church street north and began our busy day.

It is hard to believe that took place one year ago—that 365 days have gone by since that moment in time. And how would I evaluate my year—and how would you look at yours.

This morning as I was getting ready for work, I noticed that our dog Bessie was more animated than usual looking out the living room window at the driveway. I went over to the window and in the middle of the drive stood a medium sized doe, looking this way and that and acting like she didn't know which way to go. Sort of like I feel some days.

I guess the question I am dancing around is this: what do I have to show for this past year? Have i just lived out my days in quiet desperation like Eliot's Prufrock measured out his life with coffee spoons—I am very much into coffee but after the first cup I am on to other things.

Even things that might at first glance seem quantifiable are not that easy to assess. Am I a better father, husband, friend than I was a year ago. I would like to think so but I am not really the one to ask. Have I left behind all my bad habits—not quite but am allowing myself to be helped by that "still small voice" of the Lord to give me the strength to complete what was begun in me many, many years ago.

I still like a good cigar, even though I haven't had one in quite some time. It's like this: why pay six or seven dollars for something that will burn itself up in a half an hour and then be left with bad breath and a cotton tongue.

If anything I have learned this past year it would be balance and a bit more acceptance and or patience towards those things I have no control over. I have also worked on my ability to accept myself and not look to other people for my validity. I have finally realized that if we wait for acceptance from others to feel good about ourselves, we might well be waiting into the next century. And the fact is that we all have our issues, blind spots and personality quirks. If we can't be good to ourselves we can't give anything but our need to those around us. I want to be a giver most of all and not always a taker—a person who builds up others in order that they can reach the heights they were destined for.

Since it has taken me several days from 9/11 to finish this post I will add a bit today before I wrap this thing up.

Yesterday, I went to a birthday party for a guy who works part-time at our local health food store. His name is Ray and he is now 85 and still working part time in order to keep busy. He is like the Walmart greeter type person—he welcomes you into the store with your name and is genuinely glad to see you. Anyway, the store's owners set up the party to honor him and after looking at him, I can firmly say there is hope for all of us. Not that he hasn't had his health issues but as he stood there yesterday, he looked happy and healthy and is still able to drive himself to and from work, etc.

Another person at the party asked my how my life has been lately and I was almost hesitant to tell her that it has been really good. I am more aware of this the past few days and reflected on some of this while having a glass of Merlot with my wife the other evening. As parents we often judge our life's success on how well our kids do and while this line of reasoning has it's obvious shortcomings, it is often very solid and affirming. At this point our four kids are happy, healthy and doing well. The first three are married and two are expecting babies in February. I guess most of all, what pleases me about them is that they really seem to appreciate Sandi and I and all that we did as a family as they were growing up. The two oldest live about three hours away in Raleigh, NC and we really enjoy getting together and hanging out and doing dinner as a family. My son even bought a nice bed for their spare room so Sandi and I can enjoy our stays with them a little more.

In addition to what I have already mentioned, my relationship with my wife is as good as it ever has been and my job and friendships have been very fulfilling the past several months.

So I guess in general, this past year has been one of adventure and forward movement. I don't have anything less to say blog-wise, but the need to let it all hang out in cyberspace is not as acute as it once was. The time lag between posts has been almost comical but this too is a seasonal thing. Fall is coming to the mountains of North Carolina and we have some hardwood on the way. We are going to try growing wheat grass and juicing it and maybe in the late winter assemble a greenhouse and start some plants for sale and our garden. It is certainly an enjoyable ride and I am looking forward to what the new day brings.

The Long Ride

2009-08-11T12:39:00Z

When I began writing about my adventures and mental musings two and a half years ago, "Looking for the Long Ride" was really the only name that fit where I was at as a person or where I felt I fit in the overall scheme of things. Life to me at that point was more of a long wave type of thing—catch it way back and ride for awhile until you hit the beach.

This blog's title actually came from a moment in time during the late sixties as I hitch-hiked through western Europe. Frustrated by people who would stop and pick me up only to take me a couple of miles down the road and leave me in a much worse place to hitch a ride, I began asking potential rides how far up the road they were actually going. Taking only the longest rides (barring pouring rain), made life a lot easier and less frustrating to me and that is how the concept of looking for the long ride developed.

However, it has recently come to my attention that a point in time exists where we stop "looking" and begin "riding" as it were.

Looking to me implies a searching or a seeking—looking to make a connection rather than an awareness of how we are currently "connected". Living in a state of always looking almost implies a never finding what we are actually turning our attention to or seeking.

Sounds confusing—not really: it's a matter of perspective.

Not that continuing to "look" or "seek" or cast our view towards something is inherently a bad thing. I think we have to keep learning and looking forward to what each day has to bring. However if looking keeps us from enjoying the moment, then that is where we need to re-evaluate our life and make adjustment.

So, with that said, I must now say that I am no longer in a state of constantly "looking for the long ride" but at age 60 have finally realized that I am on and in the long ride. No longer looking but a part of that which I always, in the back reaches of my mind, aspired to. Not that I am complete—not that I have attained the place of perfection or total satisfaction and achievement—but what I am in process of is realizing that what I have in my hand or what is currently my life, is much more profound than I had here-to-for realized.

I believe that I am not alone in this—that many of us have lived our lives without fully committing to what each day has for us. In not fully committing, we really can't move forward and into that which the future holds for us.

I wish I could find the quote by John Maxwell that really speaks to what I am trying to evoke. What I remember about the quote is he said that at the moment that we commit to something a shift happens which opens up all kinds of possibilities that were there all along but not attainable until we committed.

That being said, I am now aware of the fact that I'm committed to where I am, at this very moment. This is where all of my actions and in-actions have led me. My life is as complete right this very minute as it ever has been—I don't need to keep looking for something to happen to me in order to feel as full as I am right now in this moment.

Not that I won't be tested in this, my new way of looking at life: I am sure there is one just around the corner. Nothing I think or feel fits within a nice convenient sized box that can be mailed anywhere in the world for one flat-rate price. I will have to refine and re-define what it is that I am reaching for or seeking.

However, at this very moment, I am more than blessed with a fantastic wife, great kids and a wonderful way to make a living. Even the garden is doing well—the beans are canned and waiting for a suitable dinner and the corn and tomatoes are just around the corner. My past has been interesting, to say the least, and I am sure that my future is one in which I am taking part in right this very moment.

Enjoy your ride today!

Coal Mining Memories

2009-07-17T22:07:00Z

Many of my most treasured memories from childhood revolve around summer vacations with my grandparents who lived in Terre Haute, Indiana, about 400 miles away from our home in Port Huron, Michigan. My dad's parents lived in our hometown and we would visit them on a more or less weekly basis, but my mother's parents lived in the far away (for the late 50"s and early 60"s) Indiana.

I remember the long rides on the two lane roads in the old "51 Studebaker or late-model, Buick V8 my dad owned at the time. This was before Ipods, in-car DVD systems and all the other entertainment features kids have available today. We counted state license plates, made words out of road signs and sang songs or read comic books to pass the time on a long ride. I vaguely remember my hand and arm playing airplane out the open window and the Burma Shave signs that had cropped up all over the two-laned landscape of those days.

These memories were brought back to me in an rather round about way last week as I listened to a Levon Helm song entitled, "The Mountain" off his 2007 "Dirt Farmer" album. The first verse goes like this:

I was born on this mountain a long, long time ago
Before they knocked down the timber and a strip-mined all the coal
When you rose up in a mornin' before it was daylight
To go down in that dark hole and come a back up at night

Helm was one of the members of "The Band" back in the day and has continued his plaintive, Americana-focused, story-telling since that group dissolved in the late 90's.

In the late 50's and early 60"s I often spent a couple of weeks by myself during summer vacations with my collective grandparents in Terre Haute, Indiana or briefly in Vandalia, Illinois. My mother's dad Harry, worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad and my natural grandmother Mary, (divorced and remarried) worked for the Packard Shirt Co. Harry was in charge of a line and signal group and Mary sewed collars on fancy shirts for a living. When she remarried it was to a coal-miner named Harvey Smith and the house I remember staying in the most was really a trailer that got so hot in the summer the Wonder Bread almost turned to dough in the cabinet above the sink.

What partial memory the Levon Helm song stirred in me was my grandmother Mary driving late at night to pick my grandfather up from work in a coal mine several miles north of Terre Haute proper. I would be in the back seat asleep and would awaken to the sight of grandpa Harvey coming out of the mine with his white owl eyes, light hat propped on his head and nickel plated round lunch bucket swinging at his side. Everything but the area around his eyes was coal black and the smell that he brought into the car was something that had attached to him a mile or two underground. Musky and mysterious is all that I can recall at this moment.

He was a real gentleman and as I remember, loved listening to the radio and loved my grandma. In later years they would move almost a half a block away to a real house by a church and I don't think it was as hot during my summertime stays. Most of my recollection is fairly fuzzy from that time but it seems that coal-miners worked long hours and he wasn't around as much as my other grandfather who lived in an upscale suburban subdivision on the other side of town.

Suffice it to say, Harvey died several years later from what we now know was "black lung". After his death, my grandmother visited us in Port Huron several times before finally moving in and taking care of us kids while my mother went back to work. She never remarried and the special bond that we had from those early years was never broken and never quite understood by me or my siblings. During my many rebellious phases, she would quietly remind me of my responsibilities and I would kick and scream and finally end up doing the "right" thing after I couldn't tell her to go away anymore.

There's a lot more I could write about those times and how special I felt in the midst of really being somewhat left alone and on my own. It is what it is as the saying goes. It was an interesting ride for that time and the memory of it certainly took me on a ride today—hope you enjoyed hanging on.

Berry Picking with Euell

2009-07-03T00:36:00Z

As i stomped my way through the briars and undergrowth today in order to get to the black raspberries beside the old homeplace, i wondered if they were glad to see me. I didn't feel Euell Gibbons spirit or anything like that but the sense that I had was that these plants do their best every year to produce good fruit and many times it withers on the cane because no one takes the time to search them out. There they sit in the full sun waiting for some fearless pioneer to pass by and take an interest in them. One almost has to wonder where are the deer or the bear who are constantly on the prowl for a free meal.

I can almost hear each berry say "thank you"..."thank you"..."thank you" each time I release one of its fruits and the tight little branch it is attached to snaps back back and forth before finally coming to rest as my hand reaches through to another single berry or better yet a cluster of ripe goodness.

I remember one time years ago Sandi and I walked past a house that had just been torn down in order to make way for a new highway. In the front of the house there had been a glorious dry-stacked stone wall that had been almost totally covered by years of neglect. Sandi was into stone walls and I was into helping her do her thing and we came back with a truck and began to load what was left of those stones for transport back to our house and another rock walkway, patio or assemblage. It was almost as if it was our duty to the person who had diligently found and placed those rocks years before, to gather them up and reuse them—to continue the tradition that had begun in some field twenty or thirty years before our little afternoon walk.

The idea of letting that anxious bulldozer plow them under as if they were somehow deserving of that fate was much too much to contemplate. We would save those flat worn stones and incorporate them into our living space and enjoy them for as long as we could before we to, go the way of all flesh.

It seems like only the right way to think—we have to preserve what is good and fitting of our heritage or it will be lost forever. Not that we cling to things out of some desperate motive to prolong our days or give meaning to our time here on earth—but that we enter into the stream of history that flows past us sometimes like a torrent and other times is like looking at a landscape that hasn't had rain in a while and all we see are the gaping cracks like veins running through our lives.

That such randomness can hold so much mystery amazes me. That a thirty minute piece of time picking berries can hold such interest and be filled with such poetry is a constant joy.

As the words and music inside our heads complete the soundtrack of our lives, let us rejoice in the peace that passes all understanding. That's a good ride any day.

Family Matters

2009-07-02T01:40:00Z

I was just about to get some ice cream out of the freezer when Sandi called me on my cellphone from the supermarket. Jessika, our oldest daughter, had been in a bad accident and had been taken to the trauma ward at the local hospital in Cary, North Carolina where she lives. It was our son, Joseph calling Sandi, and he didn't have any more information for us but was heading over to the hospital and would call us as soon as he found out anything. As I struggled with my feelings about how hurt my daughter might be, I do remember taking time to pray for her and wondering why this had happened.

There was a brief moment when I felt guilty about even enjoying the rest of what was becoming a beautiful evening in the mountains. I guess that is where the ice cream came in. Would God hear my prayer if I did something enjoyable when Jessika could be in bad shape because of the accident. Within the context of all that was going through my mind at the time, I had a sense that she was going to be alright and that we would be getting a good report from my son—yet, at the same time I fully felt the soberness of the moment and the hard reality that her ultimate condition was not in my hands but God's.

Anyway, an hour or so later, I was talking with my daughter, who though banged up a bruised pretty severely, was being released to go home. This after CAT Scans and x-rays and so forth to eliminate any broken bones or internal injuries.

All this happened on June 20th. We had already scheduled a trip to visit the kids for the following weekend and so kept in touch with Jessika throughout the week to see if she was feeling up to us coming. By mid-week the trip was a go and we looked forward to having the whole family together on Saturday evening. Lydia, second to the youngest, was also planning on being in Cary that weekend as well.

All in all, we had a wonderful time with our family and consider ourselves fortunate that we still have Jessika with us. Several thoughts came to mind during this whole process which in turn led to me writing this.

First of all my son and daughter live within a mile or two of each other and Joseph took really good care of letting us know about Jessika and keeping us informed as well as running errands for her, etc. That type of stuff really makes a parent happy—you can't manufacture closeness or caring and our kids have really come a long way in that respect.

Also, our family just seems to flow pretty well with one another when we are together. I am sure that would be tested if it was twenty-four-seven for an extended period of time—but overall, for a long weekend, we enjoy one another's company. They tell us they get together every couple of weeks for a collective dinner or cookout as well.

If you had to write a script for life, this is the type of scene an author would no doubt include. What we do today builds memories for tomorrow. Then there come days when those self-same memories help us navigate through life's sometimes choppy waters.

Family is important and Sandi and I look forward to our trips to see the kids. We are fortunate they are only 3-4 hours away. There is always a trip to Barnes and Noble and a few Starbuck's stops along the way to break things up and make the trips there and back more interesting. Or at least that is the way the ride seems to be—and for that I am grateful.

It Is Finished! Almost

2009-07-01T15:15:00Z

When a project I have started takes a lot longer to complete than I had anticipated, I am reminded of an old movie I once saw about the artist Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The Pope or some high ranking member of the church comes into the picture after the artist had been working on the fresco for far to long and exclaims: "Michelangelo, when will you make an end!" to which the artist replies, "When I am finished!" or something to that effect.

The ceiling did get painted and the rest, as they say, is history.

I felt much the same this year as the wet mountainous spring kept me from first getting my potatoes planted when I wanted to and then postponing the planting of my corn and beans until the first weekend of June. The good news is that everything is in the ground and growing by leaps and bounds due to the favorable weather we have experienced the past several weeks. A little rain followed by some 70 degree days does a lot for those small seeds: they germinate quickly and then grow really fast, actually catching up to those planted weeks earlier while the ground was still a bit cooler.

At least that has been my experience.

Gardening is something that I look forward to each year but as I get older, calendar-wise, the job does seem to get a little harder every year. This year, after hauling off last years stems and stocks (to wet to burn fully) I mowed down the weeds, tilled and raked then tilled and raked again. Then, after church on one Sunday, I tilled again, set up the row stakes and string, made my furrows, sowed the seed and covered them with peat and composted manure. This 30 row planting was a marathon session that took me almost 6 1/2 hours and several days to regain the energy I spent that afternoon.

Don't get me wrong—I am glad to still have the energy to expend however it ends up getting spent. It is just that it takes longer to get back to normal than it did last year. In a perfect world I could have broken the six hours into several sessions but with our weather's irregularity I just needed to get it done while the ground was still dry enough to work in.

It has been two or three weeks since the above took place and we are now hoping for a little moisture since the soil is drying out because of all these beautiful days we have had.

I had this thought while driving home from work tonight: the weather doesn't really care what we care or what we wish for—it is what it is. It can't really hear our thoughts and prayers and give us that perfect day because we are getting married outside or having people over for a cook out. If you get the perfect day, be thankful—but if you don't, remember it is just the other side of the same coin. Sometimes you get heads and sometimes it is tails all the way.

I guess that is why they say: make hay while the sun shines.

Rainy or not—that's the end of another not so long ride.