How Sarah Saved Christmas...

...and revived two old souls.  Many traditions are tied to our home.  Growing up I never had a home for long.  By the time I graduated from high school I had moved 11 times, several in the middle of the school year.  In 1996 our four children, Betty and I moved to Jackson Tennessee, to 79 Countrywood Dr., and made it our home for 25 years.  (It is important to this blog to know that our youngest daughter Sarah Blessing was only 2 when we moved and had only known this as home.)

We began immediately to form traditions.  One of the most beloved occurred the weekend after Thanksgiving.  We would drive out to a local Christmas tree farm, ride in a wagon pulled by mules, harvest our Christmas tree, drink hot chocolate and return.  We decorated the tree, ordered pizza, and settle in for a den floor, evening picnic, and watched a Christmas movie.  Our children grew up, married, and had families but we continued the tradition.  Two years ago, we sold the home, gave our children most of our things, and moved into a dorm room on Union’s campus.  Last year we were so committed to this tradition we pulled it off in Kingston.  Found a tree farm, had the family, pizza, and a movie.  There were a few differences, no mules, no wagon but all in all the tradition survived and all were snugged in for another year.  

2022 has been a bit of a struggle for Betty and me.  I am retiring in 2023, we are trying to build a home on the other side of Tennessee, my mom is struggling with ancient life issues, I have a large sculpture commission I am trying to begin that will last 5 years, am trying to prepare for my last solo show at Union and trying to find time to have joint replacement surgery.  Add to this the Art Dept. is losing five people I am mostly tasked to oversee the hiring of their replacements and as of this writing, we haven’t filled one.  To say we are under a bit of stress would be exact.

Last week we came to Kingston fairly wrung out but settled in to begin our Thanksgiving week.  On Sunday it suddenly dawned on us we had left all our Christmas decorations, from the tree stand to the star and everything in between in Jackson.  I wanted to lie down in the woods and let winter have its way.

However, Sarah, so tied to the tradition, was having none of it.  She leaped into action like a duck hunter on a duck.  She baked dough ornaments and had her schoolchildren paint them.  She encouraged us.  We began to make paper chains from old magazines, and I made a silver star out of cardboard and aluminum foil.  She had some old ornaments, a few decorations, several Christmas movies, and arrived yesterday with a fresh dozen Krispy Kreme’s.  Sissy and her family joined us and by evening were picnicking and watching It’s a Wonderful Life in front of a beautiful tree in a warm home filled with saved traditions.  Sarah had saved Christmas and, in the process, revied two old souls.  Merry Christmas!                     

 

Her school children ornaments.

Puttering in People's Hearts

I am not a chit-chatter.  I’m often accused of a “cutting too close to the bone” conversational style.  I am exceedingly and painfully shy.  I have a hard time knowing what to say and the anxiety of it often causes me to say nothing.  I am truly very interested, interested in the person, the real person.  Not what they do for a living but what they would die for.  Not their favorite restaurant but what they think about God.  Not what they did yesterday but what they would do if they could have their dream life.  I find people oddly intriguing and want to know them intimately.  This is both a curse, men normally aren’t like that and aren’t wanting to share it anyway and today it’s never good to venture too deep into a woman's heart (except your lover); and a blessing, there is always someone who will throw in with me and share their story, allow me to putter around in their hearts.  I live a fairly adventurous life, I enjoy a good footpath, poking into far corners and seeing what’s around that bend yonder, to see if I can touch the bottom.  The same goes for people, I long to know the times they’ve gone the distance, submitted, came away scarred but alive, lived beyond their emotional means, survived, and thrived.  We had our annual Benson get-together yesterday, all were present but fourteen, eleven of which were mine, gotta share that time with other families.  I laid in bed in the early morning hours today thinking about all those people, most of whom I know a lot about.  We are a curious lot, centered solidly in Christ.  We’ve been around the bend, straightened by the deadly curves, scarred terribly, self, God, family, and others inflicted but we are strong, very strong, and boy do we have stories.  All in all, I had a great Thanksgiving, I know many of the skeletons in the closets, names of the wounded, those who are about to summit, and those like me who are passing them on our way down. We are a clan, an all-for-one and one for all, in it to the end, puttering in each other’s hearts, family, children of God.  Amen.  Let Advent begin.  Let me be the first to say, Merry Christmas. 

      

A Hidden Spice for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day 2022

Sometimes I am shocked by the way The Word and life have a gift of togetherness.  I am still reading 1 Chronicles, and it can still be dry, name after name unpronounceable by a mouth shaped in the southern United States but this morning the book was spiced with life.  In chapter 16 King David returns the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem and “Then on that day David first appointed that thanksgiving be sung to the Lord…” and he has written a song to be sung.  It begins “Oh give thanks to the LORD; call upon his name…” and continues, a beautiful song of thanksgiving.  I had never thought how appropriate this would be on Thanksgiving until I read it on Thanksgiving.  So, to all of you this day, King David and I wish you a sweet song of Thanksgiving to the Lord “from whom all blessings flow”, good family, good food, and good songs.  

From our family to yours.

      

Through Hiking with Day Hikers

Life is a journey with people, no one treks the earth alone.  Some are through hikers, you, and those you will travel with from beginning to end, some, are day hikers we meet for a moment and then our paths diverge.  Day hiker personal relationships are strenuous.  We rarely share much in common except a brief spot of trial often marked “Difficult.”  Doing a difficult trail with through hikers is good because you are each encouraging the effort needed to push through, however with day hikers it is never so easy.  You don’t have a long-haul relationship in common, you only have to hike together for a short period so the gift of comradery is often not a part of your relationship.  But the trail remains and the wise hikers, the true hiker, the through hiker, know all partnerships are valuable if seen as valuable.  They do not seek encouragement as much as they seek to encourage.  Helping others to love the hike is encouraging enough for the through hiker.  Hiking is the point, the trail through the earth, and being on it with anyone can always be made better if one chooses, often choosing even when the trail is made a little more difficult.  

       

I See Sometimes

I see them.  They are huddled in corners on side streets, laying prone on a subway platform, folded up on city benches.  They never move, hidden beneath layers of rags, silent, still, sculpture.  I pray for everyone.  They could be angels sent to guard us, visible only as they rest, their war so violently swift we can’t see them working.  But when they rest, we see them.  They are much like their Master, “no stately form or majesty to attract us, no beauty that we should desire Him” so humans pass them by, ignoring them, caught up in our own majesty.  We call them homeless or street people, but they are the Celestial Sentinels, warriors, keeping us safe as we busily go about; blind to the Divine.    

 

NYC

11-11-22.  NYC.  I love this town.  Would like to live here for three years.  It would be tough.  The noise, the flow against you, the lack of a big sky, and the never alone; ever walking, riding, and being with thousands of strangers.  But I love it in small doses.  Three years is a small dose in imagination and I imagine it would be nice to fully explore this city, to know its intimate nooks and beautiful crannies, to see it stormy, fully fall, bathed with snow and orange sunsets, and occasionally bump into the rich and famous as we did yesterday.  On any given day you see what you normally never see juxtaposed against what you never want to see.  There is so much crammed into so little, it is height, width, and depth density of sight, sound, feel, taste, and smell all at a warp speed you experience up close and intimate, personal, in your space, which allows you to live at warp, conscious of every second.  And then you rapidly become numb to all that and just go with it, the flow against you now includes you as you go along.  The madness becomes an odd rhythm, a tune with a thousand instruments and everyone is tapping to a peculiar melody.  You open yourself up to the chaos and begin to see the tapestry of the human will being woven into a Big Apple, its New York Baby and it is very good…in small doses!      

Targeting Buckey

A few weeks ago, as Betty and I hiked Fair Haven we came upon a giant Sweet Gum tree that a beaver had gnawed down.  He has done this before even cutting down a small Giant Sequoia that we had been growing for ten years.  I determined that day that I was going to kill the beaver.  I see them all the time, so I was fairly confident of ridding myself of this aggressive fellow.  For days I thought about my decision more and more and realized I didn’t really want to kill a beaver.  When we left to return to west Tennessee, I prayed God would keep the beaver off His land and away from His trees.  I do not know the moral of this story but only that  I can’t kill something unless it is for something bigger than a tree.  I hope whatever the moral is I don’t have to learn very often.  

Lovers Make Growing Older Better

I have been thinking a lot lately about the heroic and humble efforts it takes to fulfill all the roles age requires of you.  I can remember fondly the role of self alone; playing, eating, sleeping.  Now I am a Christian, husband, father, father-in-law, grandfather, artist, employee, chairman, and taxpayer, and more recently, an active son with his own set of good and grave responsibilities.  Each of these roles I play alone and each requires learned skills in order to be good at them.  Many of these require leadership.  I never knew the great difficulty of the aged, especially those of us who stay the course, keep involved, and remain open-armed to all.  I remember my mom crying every time a certain family member’s name came up, physically shuddering in overwhelming grief.  I didn’t understand it and thought her to be overly emotional.  How small my heart was while all my family's burdens lived under my roof.  Now only my lover lives under my roof and lives that mean more to me than mine can easily make us both shudder in tears as we move once again to our knees.  This is not a sad or difficult tale, it is one filled with ecstasy, hopefulness, and unrivaled joy.  Yes, the difficulties are now more acute but are part of growing old as your tent expands.  It is a fairy tale because at the beginning of this tale I said “I play alone” and at the end of the tale, God reminded me that my lover was given to me for all roles I have to live and there isn’t anything that Betty doesn’t make better.  

     

Turn Off and Tune In

There is one great need in this world, a daily realigning us toward goodwill.  However, our devices are always pitting us against others, those our device controllers make to be our enemies, those dumber than us, meaner than us, wronger than us.  That is their point.  Over the years I have become more and more aware of God’s great force on me to every morning turn alone to him.  Give him a chance to change me.  His great aim is to reconcile.  First, reconcile me to him and then for me to help him reconcile others to him.  He is for all people; he wants all people to be reconciled (restore friendly relations between).  First between Him and us individually, and then between me and you.  It is the only way.  I like this so much better than the anger and frustration my devices continue to feed into me.  Turn off and Tune in is the only answer to our great need to be reconciled (restore friendly relations between.).  Turn off.  Tune in!