It Can’t Be That Complex

Posted on January 22, 2015 by terryhenry2014

I will have to admit that I am one of those people who enjoy having Facebook friends that post viewpoints that are contrary to what I currently believe. There are many “friends” who are Democrat, Republican, pro-gun, gun control, same sex marriage, anti same sex marriage, and so on down the line of our most advertised current events.

I am often amused by the posts and comments that I scan on a regular basis from my computer or my smart phone. I love the sense of keeping in touch with my friends wanderings and the updates that my kids send about the grandchildren’s activities.

During the many years that I have been a Facebook member, I have only stopped following a few people who, more often than not, had gone off on the deep end about one thing or another. I have, like many of you reading this, found that commenting on Facebook can often lead to more misunderstanding than a comment will ever warrant. As long as you stay somewhat surfacy all is well in that digital world—but real conversations are best left for coffee shops and over a glass of wine.

Lately, I have noticed a particular poster has delved into what I would call “disputable” matters as Paul writes about in Romans 14:1. His belief that the King James translation is the only true Bible has perplexed me more so than I like to admit in public.

I have also come to the place that man’s attempt to categorize the Bible’s plan for mankind is not only disquieting to me, but is so intellectual as to be almost not understandable.

I mean, who can really get what the Calvinists are saying about “election” or what the Arminians believe about free will. And then there is the Preterist view of the end times and perhaps several hundred other doctrines that endeavor to explain what is being said in the Bible. To me, most fall short of giving me a true picture of God’s plan for my life.

And this coming from a person who tends to approach things from an intellectual standpoint. You would think that I would love to wade in this fountain of unlimited information and thought processes.

I firmly believe that these attempts to sum up in a neat package the 66 books of the Bible and all that lies between its covers, is not only obscuring God’s intents and purposes but in the extreme are far more dangerous than we give them credit for.

I am reminded of a paragraph or two from a little book I read several years ago which says to me that you don’t have to be a brilliant intellectual in order to understand the Bible. In the book “Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ” Jeanne Guyon says about those who would like to know God that: “I especially address those of you who are very simple and you who are uneducated, even you who cannot read and write. You may think you are the one person most incapable of this abiding experience of Christ, this prayer of simplicity. You may think yourself the one farthest from a deep experience with the Lord; but, in fact, the Lord has especially chosen you! You are the one most suited to know Him well.”

Don’t get me wrong—I am not saying that we don’t need to look at the Bible’s teachings with an intent to understand them and with that done put them into practice in our daily lives. What I am saying is that, once again, men have complicated something that was really meant to be much more easily understood and practiced.

In other words, I am at that point in my life where I will readily admit, there are many more questions than there are answers. The concept of a creator/God is so big that I can’t really, readily, wrap my arms around it—I am fooling myself to say that I ever was.

In one telling Bible story, Christ’s disciples asked Him to show them the Father. His response to them was, if you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.

It doesn’t get any simpler than that, does it!

 

 

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The Hardest Project

Posted on January 19, 2015 by terryhenry2014

Last spring, after several years of thinking about it, Sandi and I purchased an unheated hoop house kit from a company in Virginia. Since they wanted almost $1,800 to assemble aforementioned green house, I choose to have it delivered after asking them if the house came with “good” instructions.

A week or two after I ordered the structure (notice how I have used at least four words to describe it) I received a call that it was on its way to Boone and I left work and went to meet the delivery guy. When he showed up he told me he had a bad back and asked if I wouldn’t mind helping him unload all the pieces. Somehow this should have been a sign to me what was in store for the next month and a half.

After unloading all the parts and pieces I laid a tarp over them and waited until the weather warmed up enough to begin what was to become one of the hardest projects I had ever undertaken in my mid-sixties journey.

During the next several days I pondered the directions that came with it and began to wonder if this project was even remotely possible with the plans in front of me. What I did not know at the time I asked the nice lady on the other end of the hoop house company phone about the plans was that I would encounter lots of steps where leaps would be made and only a builder or carpenter would understand what I was being asked to do.

Needless to say, by about the 2nd day into the project I had the cell phone number of the company’s owner on speed dial and I was sure that I was looking at the project to end all projects. Granted, I have a tendency to over think things and the fact that I am slightly perfectionist only worked against my ability to do almost anything I set my mind to. Many things in the instructions didn’t seem to make good sense and I was often left with the uneasy feeling of making an unfixable mistake if I were to continue without getting clarification from the buildings maker.

At one point in our almost daily conversation, the owner told me I was going at it all wrong—that I should lay down the plans and only consult them if needed and that I should just go out and build the hoop house. This is after his son admitted to me that the plans could indeed use a little work for the sake of clarity. I have to guess that their hope was that most people would hire them to put the green house up and is probably true based on the fact that many people were using grant money to get their houses built.

Anyway, during this building process, I would get ahold of the next step or two and then head to the back yard in order to make it happen. Many times, in between, my wife would find me in a state of bewilderment and almost hopelessness, wondering if I could ever get this thing up and finished. I was discouraged by my lack of understanding and the inch by inch progress which seemed to tire me out ever more so as the days and weeks rolled past.

I am grateful at this point that I had the help of my good friend Carey, without whom I would have had to give up the self-help dream and hire the building’s finish. Also, there was another hoop house from the same company in the next county that had been erected by a farmer’s market friend of my wife. I went by his farm one day and took several pictures of his building which helped me visualize some of the finer points of construction magic that had been left off the directions.

Once the frame was up and it came time to put the “skin” on it, I was faced with the prospect of getting at least 4 or 5 people at my house at 7 am in the morning on a day when the wind was not blowing. I started making calls based on what the local weather guy said was going to happen, wind-wise, and on that fateful morning, rose early and got all the plastic covering and tools ready to rock and roll. Oh, and did I mention that a lot of work had to be done on tall step ladders. Just add that to the mix in your imagination.

So, I have several friends helping me put the skin on and it seems to be buckling in places that I don’t think look to nice and I am using speed dial again to find out if we are really doing it right. The guy on the other end of the line says to me (hoping this is my last call) that we only have to pull the plastic with our thumb and one finger and only as tight as this will allow—and yes there will be wavy parts and remember, this is only a hoop house—it’s not supposed to be “perfect”.

So, I guess that was my whole problem all along and the cause of most of my frustration with the directions and so forth. I thought every piece was supposed to fit together and that everything was already cut to size and that I would not end up bending stuff this way and that in order to make it fit. What I didn’t realize was that this project was a work in progress just like our lives—that adjustments often have to be made in the most awkward of situations—standing on top of a ladder with a drill and a self-tapping screw that doesn’t really want to bite into that galvanized metal framing.

We often have to push beyond our natural limits in order to get the job done and for most of us, this is uncomfortable and unwelcome.

Is the hoop house perfect—heavens no. But is it a functional tool that I will be able to use and enjoy for years to come—yes indeed. After several weeks of living with the finished product I was able to over look the flaws and appreciate the whole building for what it is—a place to grow stuff and extend my season by a month on either end of the growing calendar.

And that my friends is a good ride anytime.

 

 

 

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Our Future Is Now

Posted on January 12, 2015 by terryhenry2014

I remember working for the Jefferson Times in the early eighties as if it were yesterday. Well I don’t remember everyday as if it were yesterday, just a few highlights of my 3 1/2 years there as a reporter, photographer and ad salesman.

Up to that fateful day in January when I got the call to interview with the Times owner, David Desautels, I was a non-paid apprentice with White Top’s legendary fiddle maker Albert Hash. I would make the 50 mile round trip everyday for a month or two until we learned that Sandi was pregnant and the prospect of being a luthier took a distant second place to getting a “real” job in order to provide for my soon-to-be family.

Being a reporter was a job I was to hold until Sandi and I went into the mountain basket business and began the crafts show circuit in August of 1983.

Sandi and I arrived in Ashe County in August of 1978 and were quickly married on the hill behind the house we would fix up, rent-free, for the next 5 years. The house had been abandoned several years before and needed our fresh from Michigan touch in order to begin our life in the northwest mountains of North Carolina.

I mention Michigan because I believe that perspective set me apart from the people I worked with—people who had grown up in the country and were sometimes not able to see the changes coming to their quaint village. Arriving from the industrialized north, the rust-belt of America, gave me a glimpse into what was in store for the mountains I lovingly called home.

For instance, in the column I wrote every week for the Times, I often alluded to the fact that tobacco would not always be a crop local farmers could depend upon—the death knell drowned out by the tobacco auctioneers sing-song sales pitch. I also witnessed the birth of the fraser fir Christmas tree industry and saw that this two would not be something that could be counted on for a living if everyone that owned a few acres planted trees and began selling them on light bulb lit vacant lots in small towns everywhere.

My idea at the time was to suggest the local Agricultural Extension agent begin to outline plans that would help the family farmer transition from one type of economy to another, more sustainable source of income—an idea that I don’t think has ever been implemented.

In other words, not everybody can plant cabbage every year. During a good year there is too much and the price plummets. The next year, fewer people plant it and the price is much better. What we need is bio-diversity not too much of one crop and not enough of another.

In my opinion we have reached a place where our local mountain families cannot take care of the area’s nutritional needs if the big-ag trucks were to stop coming in order to stock the shelves of our supermarkets. Not that any area in our vast nation can be 100% self-supporting—the problem as I see it is that there are no plans afoot to even address this eventuality.

The bible has a lot to say about stewardship. In simple terms a steward is: …one who has been given the responsibility to manage or care for someone or something. He’s not the owner. The steward is simply the caretaker. He’s the manager of property belonging to another. From biblical point of view, “The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein…” (Psalm 24:1)

Giving away the production of food to large, multi-national corporations, is not being a good steward. Allowing Monsanto and others to patent hybrid, genetically modified seeds, means to me that we have already begun the slippery slide into corporate anarchy. Furthermore, accepting the use of Monsanto’s Roundup on our corn, soybean and wheat crops to control weeds and hasten harvest, is another step towards the twilight zone of agriculture. Just like Enron bet future earnings against their day to day operation, we are risking the health of future generations with these largely untested practices.

What I see we need is a program to begin the re-building of the family farm, which served America for many generations. However, not in the way it was practiced then. I see a system where, on a local level, we begin to produce the crops that are needed on almost a subscription basis. In other words, you grow a crop that will supply 50-100 people for a year or season. One person grows potatoes, another kale, another broccoli and so on down the line. We grow for our area and our people only. The harvest is already spoken for before it is even planted. The local extension service could be the conduit for federal or state or local program money that would be used to get the whole thing started. We would attend classes held specifically for the local grower/participants that would train us to do the work of the family farmer.

Before long, many of us would be growing enough produce to fulfill the needs of our local “clients”. Distribution channels would be created and our farmers markets would thrive on a scale of historic proportions.

Of course, we are not talking about making millions of dollars here. What we are talking about is becoming good stewards and taking back our future from the for-profit corporations that currently control most of what we eat.

This may be a pipe dream, but I believe that this or something similar, is doable and could be a way to even the playing field between the haves and the have nots.

It is certainly worth a little time and effort and would no doubt bring us closer together as a human family on the planet earth.

Not a bad ride indeed.

 

 

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Closing A Door On Some Past Stuff

Posted on January 6, 2015 by terryhenry2014

As many of you know I was an elder for several years at a local church. During this period of time, I began to address some areas within the leadership structure that I and several other elders thought problematic and which needed to be modified or simply eliminated. Had I known then what I know now, I would have quietly slipped away with my wife and family and looked for another group to fellowship with. But alas—hindsight is 20/200.

All of this happened after a planned change in leadership that ended up feeling more like a coup than a simple re-structuring of leadership titles and responsibilities.

All I can say at this point is that relationships began to fall apart after this and the situation got very contentious. After about a year into the transition, as things continued to fall apart, I became a leaky vessel with an imaginary target on my back, taking hits on an almost daily basis. The only reason I stuck it out as long as I did was a naivete on my part and perhaps a sliver of a hope that one day things would be better.

I will be the first to say that I didn’t always act in a keep-your-mouth-shut Christian manner. A couple of the people I trusted with my “opinions” actually formed a committee to “expose” my opinion/sin and then when the sit down meeting happened, didn’t actually say a bad word about us. But the damage had been done. They were on their way up in the church and I was on my way down. Sounds pretty carnal, right!

Ultimately four of the six elders left that church and began another group that served as a transition place for many of the people who would also leave.

Nobody won the war and everybody lost something during the fallout that followed.

My point here is not to re-hash ancient history, but rather release an update and a conclusion to the aforementioned mess.

As I was cleaning out my e-mail inbox today I noticed one titled “Elders Stuff”. As I clicked on one e-mail after another I began to sense a somewhat angry sadness fill my thoughts and wondered just what I was I was trying to prove by re-living some of those, crafted by the enemy, scenarios. So, after reflecting for a moment on the 4 or 5 years of back and forth e-mails (my identity at the time), I scrolled to the bottom of the page and deleted the whole box of several hundred texts.

Yes, I have finally reached a point in my life where I can say that I no longer need to linger on that particular past, play those mental tapes again, or imagine how things might have turned out better.

I am grateful for all that I have been through and endured in order that I might become one of my generation’s disillusioned ones. To become such is to be released of any illusions that I had of how things really were.

What I know now is that it is much easier to go through a door we believe God has opened than it is to close one in the right way and in good fashion when that time finally comes. I believe that perseverance is a good thing but we also need to know when it is time to move on to the next station in life.

Most of the frustration I felt during that time and the hurt that I sustained might have been eliminated had I had my ear a little closer to the ground. Yet at the same time I realize that the lessons I learned the hard way would not have been as profound.

All in all it has been a good ride and I will certainly stick with that.

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A New Year

Posted on January 5, 2015 by terryhenry2014

It is somehow significant to me that each new year that I have experienced began in the middle of winter. And about the most exciting thing a person can do during this period of time is find a good book to read, clean the basement or take some time looking through the few seed catalogs that have made their way to your doorstep.

In other words, the nights are cold and long and the days are cold and short and the wood pile seems to shrink faster than what you would hope for.

I will have to admit that I often looked forward to winter and thought of it as a time of rest and renewal—a well deserved break from the busyness of spring and summer. It was a time to fix what was broken, pull out the paints and rekindle a hobby or two. Winter was also a time to find a few books to read.

This year I have already read almost two books and am considering the third. A friend of mine recommended I read a book by Malcolm Gladwell entitled “David And Goliath” which I burned through this past weekend on my Kindle Paperwhite.

In David and Goliath, Gladwell uncovers the hidden rules that shape the balance between the weak and the mighty, the powerful and the dispossessed–all in an attempt to demonstrate how fundamentally we misunderstand the true meaning of advantages and disadvantages.

For instance, did you know that many successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic yet used that condition to their advantage or that it is most often better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond when it comes to choosing a college to attend.

I think that what this boils down to is just as our bodies need exercise to stay in shape, our minds also need to be prodded along as well in order for us to maintain our health and interest in life. Gladwell is a good writer and has a tremendous talent for distilling facts and figures and serving up the stories behind these facts and studies.

I am currently reading another of his books “Outliers: The Story Of Success”. In it he shatters the myth of the self-made-man and lets us see that: “…they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.”

Anyway, 2015 or not, these books have been just what the doctor ordered. I have slept better, had fascinating dreams and feel a purpose brewing that has eluded me for some time now.

My conclusion is that life events are not always as they seem and oftentimes the most obvious answer is not the most accurate—we have believed a lot of “Rockiesque” stories and have not taken the time to look beyond the shadows.

To some of us this revelation might be troubling, but to me, at present, this information is very liberating. I am once again a ship on the sea of life and enjoying the ride. Right now it is smooth sailing and even though there will be seasonal storms, this is the trip I was designed for from the beginning of time. Indeed, it is nice to know there are answers to many of the questions we still ponder—we just need to keep reading.

Enjoy your ride today.

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Nothing New Under The Sun

Posted on December 30, 2014 by terryhenry2014

As most of my friends know I am really a beatnik poet in disguise as a graphic designer, husband, father of four and grandpa to some wonderful grandkids.

Well, the beatnik poet thing might be kind of a stretch, but the rest is pretty self-evident.

Also, my love of poetry is, not withstanding, something that I have enjoyed ever since reading Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Sometime During Eternity” in the late 1960’s. From the book “Coney Island of the Mind”, the poem is a beat rendition about Jesus showing up in Galilee and claiming that…”the cat who really laid it on us is his dad.”

As a teen during that rebellious “Beatlesque” era, the poem spoke volumes to me as I searched for meaning and purpose in life. I remember even being asked to teach a teen Sunday school class where I read this poem and played John Lennon’s “Imagine” with the pronounced intent of giving these middle class kids stuff to think about on their road to confirmation class. When I explained to my Mennonite Brethren grandfather what I was doing in Sunday school he proclaimed that I had brought the “Anti-Christ” into the church and as I recall, didn’t have much to do with me after that.

So much for my road to poetic and intellectual maturity—suffice it to say, there were a few mis-steps along the way, whether I realized it at the time or not.

As I have grown older, my love of poetry has broadened and I have amassed quite a collection of verse and ironically one of my favorite books of poetry is, hold on to your seats, Ecclesiastes in the very same book that my late grandfather thought I was defiling. We have all come a long way since the sixties, haven’t we.

In the very first chapter of that book, the author (Solomon) states that:

7 All the rivers flow into the sea,
Yet the sea is not full.
To the place where the rivers flow,
There they flow again.

9 That which has been is that which will be,
And that which has been done is that which will be done.
So there is nothing new under the sun.

10 Is there anything of which one might say,
“See this, it is new”?
Already it has existed for ages
Which were before us.

I guess what led me to this place of remembrance today, in short, is the fact that 2014 is coming to a close, I am 65 years old and thinking those deep thoughts that come with age and the fact that life will not always be what it looks like today.

That I have more questions than answers at this point in my life is, no doubt, something I share with many people of many nationalities. I am saddened by the fact that as a society we have so much knowledge yet we have failed to sufficiently address and/or solve many of our most pressing problems.

As I listened to NPR’s “All Things Considered” on my way to work this morning, I was reminded about the fact that…”there is nothing new under the sun.” What this meant to me it that we are surrounded by all the information we need to make the right decisions as it relates to our societal ills and our way forward as a society.

Life on earth is certainly a dichotomy of sorts. We live in a world of continuous contradictions. While I enjoy a warm house, three meals a day and a more-or-less quite life, there are many that go to bed hungry, live in poverty and/or a war zone and have little or no future after high school.

I have never been to Ferguson or visited an Indian reservation or been homeless, in prison or Jewish, black or Muslim, if you get my gist.

Glen Hansard, an Irish singer and poet says in his song “Falling Slowly” that:

I don’t know you, but I want you
All the more for that
Words fall through me and always fool me
And I can’t react

And games that never amount
To more than they’re meant
Will play themselves out

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We’ve still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You’ve made it now

Yes, we still have time to make the right choices, even though at present it seems like our boat is sinking and we are lost upon the sea of life.

I could say a lot more and probably will another day, but my hope is that you can, as an astute reader, see the words that are not written between the lines and be challenged to take this post into those areas of poetic vision that will make a whole out of this fragment of thought.

This is indeed the long ride.

 

 

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From The Woods

Posted on December 29, 2014 by terryhenry2014

I was surprised to receive a comment on my last post from my younger brother whom I had not heard from in at least six years. My last communication with him consisted of me urging him to begin a conversation with our sister after the death of our mother. He said that he would and several months later I was informed by her that he had never followed through with getting in touch.

There is probably a novel hidden here or somewhere in the space between the times we have seen each other over the course of the past 20 years. Looking back I can’t really say there was any indication that our lives would work out this way—me with several grandkids and him telling me that he has isolated himself from friends and family and is currently living “in the woods” somewhere (I assume) in the United States.

The concept of nurture/nature is one that comes to mind when I think about my family and the course our lives have taken since we each left the nest in Port Huron, Michigan. I am the oldest of four and share our late mother with each of them. Their father (my stepfather) had a temper at times and we each have our own stories to tell about his abuse and how it ultimately affected us.

I didn’t find out that their father wasn’t my dad until I was in the ninth grade and as you can imagine, this fact came as quite a shock to me. I remember not talking for days until my parents confronted me about what was going on and I told them I had inadvertently found a marriage certificate that indicated they had tied the knot sometime well after my birthday. I never even knew my “real” father’s name until I asked my mother one day during a visit many years after she had been divorced from the guy who filled the father role lo those many years.

I have to say that I have never had a real desire to look up my real father similar to those stories we see in the movies—like showing up on his doorstep saying that I am your long lost son come to find you and have a relationship. Nope—that didn’t happen.

I guess his name was Roger and he had red hair which is probably why two of my girls have this reddish-blonde natural hair color. I have always imagined that he had some Irish in him but I don’t think my mother had a whole lot of info about him for her oldest son. Just as well—he can be almost anyone I want him to be—if it really came to all that.

What can I say through all of this? It is many years later and I don’t ever talk to my 2 brothers but talk to my sister at least monthly. She keeps in touch with me and I keep in touch with her.

I will admit it—our family was fractured—at it’s basic core it was broken. Not unlike many other families at that time.

I guess the hardest thing to wrap my head around is the thought of giving up or not fighting against letting our “demons” get the better of us.

My siblings were led to believe by my mother that I was the one she was most proud of and that I was the one that “made” it whatever that seemed to mean to her at the time (the many times) she said that.

I would often explain to my sister that it was just as hard for me, some days, to get out of bed and get on with life as it must be for my brother. That at my core, I was just as broken as he, but for whatever reason, I made it through the day and well into the next two or three. Becoming a Christian at age 30 was most likely what keep me in the game of life and a precursor to having four children and a marriage that has lasted 36 years.

Having a loving wife (life partner and best friend) certainly helped me through the tough times but no matter how low I might go there was never a time that I thought about giving up or cutting everyone out of my life and moving to the woods.

I began this post several weeks ago and have not wrapped my head around what it is that I really wanted to say about my brother’s brief comment.

After explaining all this (and there could be much more) I guess what I would most like to say is that even though life has not turned out like a Hallmark film of the week, my memories of my brother are mostly positive and I hope that some day we will be able to share a meal again and maybe a glass or two of wine in my outdoor living room on a warm, 72 degree, summer’s evening. We have missed a lot of each other’s lives and I am sad about that.

What keeps popping up in my head is the final two verses from one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs, “Bob Dylan’s Dream”.

How many a year has passed and gone
And many a gamble has been lost and won
And many a road taken by many a friend
And each one I’ve never seen again

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
That we could sit simply in that room again
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
I’d give it all gladly if our lives could be like that

Have a great ride today, Brother.

 

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The Road To….Good Intentions?

Posted on September 2, 2014 by terryhenry2014

Several weeks ago, after spending some time with my kids at the beach, I came home with a new appreciation for each child’s giftings and strengths/weaknesses. An idea that came to my mind at that tender moment was to take a few minutes, perhaps over the next several weeks, and let them each know how much I appreciated them.

I am a firm believer in the power of positive words and encouragement. The word encourage literally means to “…put courage into.”

Not that I have always lived up to my high expectations of myself in terms of conveying positive attitudes to my family and friends. I can often be a glass half empty kind of guy if I don’t watch myself.

However, on the day after my beach return, I texted each of my kids with an encouraging word or two about a personality trait that I saw in them that blessed me. My intent was to continue this until time ended but, as with many good intentions in our lives, I let several days pass before I thought about this again.

Yesterday, while resting from yard and garden work, the phrase, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” popped into my head. I took a few minutes to search the web about this phrases meaning and origin and was amazed at the amount of information there was to read.

And while there is no forgone conclusion as to its origin, the phrase seemingly means, on the very surface, that good intentions without action are worthless. If you dig a little deeper into the phrase, there is also the thought that many good intentions turn out bad results.

In an article about this phrase in Psychology Today, the author states: “Very few people have bad intentions. But most of the problems in the world are caused by good intentions. They may not seem good to us, but they seem good to the one taking the action. Good intentions alone are not enough to make our actions moral.”

From a Christian perspective, I have often heard it said that we judge ourselves by our intentions (acted on or not) and others by their actual actions. In that respect guess who is always going to come out ahead.

Wikipedia has this to say about “the road”. The road to hell is paved with good intentions is a proverb or aphorism. An alternative form is “hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works“.

One meaning of the phrase is that individuals may have the intention to undertake good actions but nevertheless fail to take action.[4][5] This inaction may be due to procrastination, laziness or other subversive vice.[6] As such, the saying is an admonishment that a good intention is meaningless unless followed through, which is notoriously difficult for common good intentions such as losing weight through dieting or quitting smoking.[7]

A different interpretation of the saying is that good intentions, when acted upon, may have unforeseen bad consequences. An example is the introduction of alien species such as the Asian carp, which has become a nuisance due to unexpected proliferation and behaviour.[8]

 

It is all very interesting.

 

The conclusion I have come to in my own life it this—I have always had more thoughts than actions. This, in and of itself, is not a bad thing per se. But as time rolls on, it is our actions that we will be remembered by not our thoughts, which by and large remain unvoiced and rolling around somewhere in our memory banks.

So, within good measure, put the pedal to the metal on those thoughts that will build up your kids, your friends and co-workers. The dividends will be great even though we may not see them. This is not a pay it forward kind of scheme, but a way to release some of what we have been given in order to benefit and bless those who share the road that we are walking down.

Have a good day and a great ride.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Quality Time

Posted on August 6, 2014 by terryhenry2014

As parents we are faced with many dilemma’s during the years our kids are growing up and learning to live their lives apart from the safe harbor that we call home. We call it a success when that time in their lives is reached and they launch out, graduate from whatever, get a good job, get married and begin raising a family of their own. End of story.

Only, it is never really that simple—this process of living and launching, nourishing and nudging—the dance that begins in the labor room and continues until only God knows when.

Sandi and I are in the time of life where we are fully enjoying the fruit of our labors. There is nothing better than time with all the kids, on someones deck or back yard, drinking wine and listening to the thoughts, ideas, and opinions float around and around the circle that is family.

This past week, Sandi and I joined the rest of the family at the beach in North Litchfield, South Carolina. We have been going to this same beach almost every year since about 1983, when Sandi and I were self-employed craft basket makers and doing as many as 20 arts and craft shows each year.

One of these shows was at Atalaya, a sculpture compound built by Anna Hyatt Huntington in 1931. The castle is across highway 17 from Brookgreen Gardens, which is a sculpture garden and wildlife preserve also built by the Huntingtons. It is several square miles of pure floral and sculptural bliss that can barely be described.

Suffice it to say, our time at the beach is always well spent and there have never been too many rainy days during all these years to spoil our collective fun.

This year, we split a week with my daughter in law’s family. And even though I would have liked to spend the whole week at the beach, the time we had was well spent and featured many “kodak” moments—this a reference to the pre-digital age of camera photo’s as opposed to iPhone point and shoot memories.

Really, the beach is about two things at this point in time—watching the grandkids play in the sand and water and time with our kids at night on the screened in deck.

What I have come away with this year is simple: after all is said and done, family is all you really have in this fast paced world.

In retrospect I would also have to say to my kids—life is never going to be perfect and there are many things about our time here on earth that you will never be able to figure out. Learn to hold things lightly and go easy on yourself when you fail to live up to your own expectations or when others disappoint you. Learn to respect yourself and love others and hopefully you won’t take as long as it has taken me to figure these things out. 

Just as God is always with you, you are always in our thoughts and prayers and we want you to be happy and enjoy the parts of life that you find yourself in and surrounded about. We gave it our best all those years ago and hopefully you will remember the good times and let the rough patches build the character in you they were intended to create.

We love you and are blessed that you are successful in living and loving everyday.

This year at the beach was one of the best.

 

 

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Wheat & Tares & Weeding Woes

Posted on July 28, 2014 by terryhenry2014

I have been gardening for nearly 35 years and along the way have learned a whole lot about growing your own food. This year, Sandi and I invested in a 20 foot by 36 foot cold frame/greenhouse in order to extend our mountain growing season and also keep the deer away from our tomatoes, beans and peppers.

Talk about a learning curve. First of all it took nearly two months to complete the structure and then get the plants in the ground in time to get a harvest this year. Then, as the days grew longer and got hotter, we found that just dropping the sides early in the morning did not keep the temperature in the 85 to 90 degree safe growing range. So we installed a 50% shade cloth along the top which seemed to keep the temp down most of the time except when it was 80 outside with no appreciable breeze.

Anyway, the crops inside are looking good even though we burnt a few buds during the week or two before we installed the shade cloth.

My wife says that I have kept up with the gardening tasks really well this year although when It came time to harvest the onions and garlic, I was doubtful this was an accurate representation.

What I mean by this is the fact that even though I had weeded several times during the early stages of garlic and onion growth, it seems that overnight these fertile beds are covered with the most pernicious weeds imaginable.

So it is not just a matter of forking up the garlic and onions but the beds must be weeded at the same in order to ready them for fall planting. And like I have said before, you really need to be in the weeding mood in order for this process to take place.

As I gave myself over to this altered state of consciousness of playing in the warm soil, I couldn’t help but think of the bible verse that talks about weeds, which in this particular illustration are called “tares”.

One has to wonder where all these weed seeds come from. It seems that no matter how well you weed one year, there are even more the next year. Maybe this verse explains where these weeds came from. I certainly know that gardeners don’t order them online and plant them along with the good seeds.

Matthew 13:24-30 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Tares among Wheat
24 Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven [a]may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed [b]tares among the wheat, and went away. 26 But when the [c]wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. 27 The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? [d]How then does it have tares?’ 28 And he said to them, ‘An [e]enemy has done this!’ The slaves *said to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?’ 29 But he *said, ‘No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”

Maybe this is a stretch but perhaps someday the weeds will be gone and the earth will produce only what the good seed intends.

Enjoy your ride and your gardening.

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