Once Upon A Time

On some lucky day, some day Providence allowed, you come upon someone who lead you in one of the most profound periods of your life.  One who was present, a leader, mentor, and guide but also outside your experience, aloof, set apart, but nonetheless with you as you lived out your greatest years and experience up to that time in your young life.  Yesterday I met just such a man, after 50 years, our trials passed in the waiting room of a doctor's office.  I, sitting waiting on my lover, he seated across the room doing the same.  I would never have known him from this distance but as happenstance sometimes happens, another called him by name; “Vic King, how are you doing!” and the old man sat down beside him to visit.  Vic King my high school football coach.  I sat smiling, thinking back over all those years to the highlight of my youth, playing high school football.  It seemed so long ago but now brought fruitfully to mind.  Oh those gay years, passing like a twinkle, but charged with life most people never live.  The living, the being so alive in a body which was so alive in combat of the living against the living for the title of winner.  I have never had that living since but was eventually replaced with a living, a combat much more profound, more on the line, up for grabs, life and death; the daily struggle between good and evil.  But I regress.  I walked over and sticking out my hand, said, “Hey Coach King.”  He turned and looked up at me and it was him, the big face, blue-eyed, a natural smile, twinkling eyes of a man who always seemed to be amused by life.  He reached and took my hand and said, “I don’t believe I know you.”

“I’m Lee Benson.  You were my coach in Crossville between 1973 and 76.  I played with Charlie VanWinkle, Danny Taylor, and Jim Cokkinias.”  

“Oh yeah,” he said, “we had some good years then didn’t we.  When we came there we didn’t have much to build on but we got it turned around.”

“Yes we did, Coach,” I said.  

We said a few more sentences and I knew he didn’t remember me.  I told him how good it was to see him, I turned to go back to my waiting and he turned to renew his conversation with his friend.  Later his wife came out from the back, he rose to join her and walked toward me as I was sitting by the door.  I said, “Coach can I get a picture with you?”  

He said, “Sure!!! Honey this is Lee Benson.  I was his coach in Crossville.”  

“I remember you, Lee.” said his wife.  

I didn’t remember her but I could tell Coach King had finally found me in his memory.

His wife took our picture.  We said our goodbyes and he walked out probably for the last time before we meet again in heaven.  Sometimes, as Providence will have it, greatness is once again awakened and you know, “Boy, I was young.  I sure was young!!! 

 

"Cash for Clunkers"

You don’t really understand the cursed fall until after age 60.  It begins to bear its teeth and snarl as it watches us try to open cereal bags and put on our socks.  And as we began to suffer the physical effects of the fall we are once again evangelized as never before.  How could something so beautiful, well-made, and capable fall apart?  Its failing will take us along with it, each part giving up, is one less we can depend on to survive.  We can feel the old clunker doesn’t, can’t, work like it used to, and the feeling leads to us knowing it, we will eventually give out, too few working parts to keep us going.  We rail at its unnaturalness, hit the steering wheel, and look out the windshield into eternity lying dead ahead.  Pun intended.  We need Obama to step in with “Cash for Clunkers”.  This is exactly what Jesus does, he redeems us with His blood cash, and we cruise into eternity in a brand new, showroom model.  However we must preorder, there is never one of us put aside unless we specifically ask.  It is what keeps us from cursing our old, wearing-out model, the assurance that one day this old rattletrap will be restored to better than new condition and we will cruise eternally with the top down. 

     

Fair Haven

You, Maker of heaven and earth, did at some point, eons ago, nod at this spot of nothingness and said, “Let there be wonderful wilds filled with living land, abundant waters, and sapphire skies, and let someday, two lovers come and name it Fair Haven and claim all the beauty I have made for them.”  I praise you Father for such an abundance of love poured out for me and mine.

 

Why Blue?

If one never looks at the sky, to wonder long upon its blueness, to see it contrasted with the green of the mountains forest, then one will never consider it, or when he does, thinks it not much worth his time.  If one overlooks the Praying Mantis, doesn’t speak to it as one living thing to another, telling it, “I am more glorious, oh so much more glorious than you,” one could think less of it and much less of himself.  Flowers and birds, trees and bees, are all there to give all our wise answers to all our dull questions a place, sheer foolishness.  The grandeur of us is us apart from anything we have done.  You are you with absolutely no help from you.  Your thinking, seeing, feeling, hurting, loving self is gifted to you.  You are a gift, the most stunning gift of all your life.  But if you don’t normally hear the wind in the trees, you are not much worth a moment being you.  Oh the mysteries of God in Three while sitting on the porch under a blue sky I see, but have no thoughts worthy of why it is blue.  

   

 

A Letter to My Democratic Friends

To my Democratic friends, acquaintances, and readers.  Don’t do this.  Do not vote for this pair of illegitimate, unkind, and desperately misguided politicians.  I will not argue individual morality with you for President Trump and your two are equally morally corrupt.  I will argue facts—first the cause of our children.  From abortion to the teaching of children the lifestyle of LGBTQ+ and the ability to change one's gender identity or live in a world where you will be exposed to others' attempts to be a different gender is unkind to the point of appalling.  No one can uprightly and with a spiritually guided conscience assert that these two ideas of cultural reality are good for children.  Secondly, the hardship on the poor that the economic situation occurring over the last 3 ½ years of democratic leadership, is likewise appallingly unkind and unjust.  Thirdly the unrestrained access to our country by anyone willing to walk in is one of the greatest acts of treason perpetrated by any political party in the history of America.  How anyone can think it would be a good idea to invite all people who would like to walk unrestrained into your home is unfathomable and unpardonable.  This act alone by a democratic president and his party is the reason for them all to be tried, convicted, and sentenced for treason.

Lastly, the America I hear the democrats, the media, popular culture, television, music, and Hollywood describe and uphold is not an America I want or even recognize.  Much of what I see in America today is incomprehensible to me as anything other than evil and upheld by the democratic party.  I am a man of faith, redeemed from a life of sinful, blind, unrestrained, self-indulgence.  The America I see now is the one I would have created myself if it had not been for the grace and mercy Christ Jesus afforded me on November 10, 1986, in saving me from myself and my own destruction.

I have been on both sides of this, raised a Democrat, and chose a life of moral ineptitude, but was saved from myself for a life grounded in Truth.  In this Truth, I implore you not to vote for these two people who are just like the person I used to be. 

 

 

I Am Only Old Because of My Age

“I am only old because of my age!” my lover told me yesterday in response to us both feeling a bit of our years.  Such is life with her.  She is a celebrant of living, dancing around all the time to the tune the Divine plays for living that she always hears, and I very seldom.  She is a birthday girl today, 72 of which 41 have been with me.  The 41 best years of my life.  She is really 14 but has been 14 for 72 years, this is not magic; fact, she is the youngest person I know; the “child-like” in the profound saying, “and become like little children”!  She is like a young child of 14 which keeps me close to–say maybe 40.  

Collecting seashells celebrating out 40th wedding anniversary 
last year where we honeymooned, Okracoke Island.

  

 

How To Respond to an Otter

I saw an otter yesterday.  The third time since being at Fair Haven.  Seeing an otter is not an everyday occurrence, like a shooting star it startled me when I saw it.  Its long, lean, and shining body bounded down our seawall onto the riprap and eventually back down in the river…and was gone.  The joy of it is so acute that my first thought was to assure myself I saw it and was thus assured by the smile on my face.  These experiences are life-giving, demanding I live this precious thing named life.  I was once a very dull boy, called manhood, but nothing was manly about me.  I was as dead and dumb as dirt.  But I got saved from my dullness and now am given life every time I am bright enough to acknowledge Him.  Thankfulness is a gateway trait into life and the only response when seeing an otter.   

  

 

Oh The Paradise to Come

I cannot sit at Fair Haven and do anything but look.  Its power to turn my thoughts into dreams is ever-present and needs me only to raise my eyes and see.  Just now a deer is wadding along the shore of the island across the way, eating the leaves off the overhanging trees unaware that she is a part of my morning quiet time.  Earlier as I sat in the dark, the ripe moon reflecting a silver so bright I couldn’t even collect my thoughts.  And now a bee buzzes quietly in the jungle of Vincas that celebrates morning with me.  I have long had a patch of land, a bit of sky to always claim during my morning time with The Ancient of Days but He has now given me an enormous view of earth readying me for the paradise to come.  

    

 

I Was Raised A Yellow Dog Democrat-No more

I was raised a Yellow Dog Democrat.  I will not vote Democratic now.  The first reason is the democratic establishment has decided that abortion rights are the premier cause in their platform.  Abortion is unkind.  It is the willing killing of another human.  It is often not the mother’s fault because the Democratic-led public culture dehumanizes the child and gives sainthood to the woman's right over her child. This is one of the most destructive and heinous realities of American life.   Great public culture should be where we accept the fact that many pregnancies are unplanned and often unwanted and provide loving care for both the mother and child and then inexpensive and quick methods by which the child at birth is placed in a loving home.  Instead, because of power, greed, and wanton unkindness we have allowed for a culture of killing our most valuable members, thriving children, to become a right so sacred the democratic party sees it as paramount to all other rights.  The second reason is too many of the leaders of the democratic party see my God as having no place in public life and increasing in private as well. They are actually ashamed of God.  Embarrassed by Him.  So embarrassed and ashamed they believe He is not.  This has led a vast number of young Americans to give up God for cultural relevancy.  They see a culture and the democratic party as increasingly intolerant of personal faith in a living God.  Their only alternative to living and thriving in America is to walk in lockstep with this belief.  Any other belief is unacceptable.  Lastly, I was raised in a youth culture that held government as highly suspect, often untrustworthy, unkind, and out of touch with the common man.  Today many of those who were raised in the same way see the democratic party government as the only winning team, the affirmed leader in culture, the supreme voice of truth.  This is the great falsehood I was taught early in life.  The government is never the final bar of truth but is actually never to be trusted to be truthful.  We are to guard the government, not for its survival, but to keep it from destroying ours.  I see the democratic party determined to place us all under government control and willing to cancel anyone who thinks, expresses, or acts outside their prescribed way of thinking, doing, and being.  

   

Nature

Nature, a plot of earth you place under your care and daily purview, is a sure source of your evangelism to the love, care, and salvation of Christ Jesus as your Lord and Savior.  

I found this Divine work of sculpture lying
on a forest floor.  It so demanded my attention, and 
more quickly, my adoration for God in Christ.

 

A Bone Awakens A Gnarled Mind

My lover and I took my mom, our ancient of days now suffering dementia, for a walk yesterday, me walking while pushing her wheelchair.  We came to a stone bench in a quiet park and set for an hour and visited.  At one time I glanced down and lying on the ground was a small bone, maybe an inch long.  I picked it up and was immediately taken by its exquisite beauty.  I wondered to what tiny creature it once belonged, how it had come to be only a tiny bone left, and sure its bones being beautiful it must have been as well.  Exquisite beauty found lying randomly on the ground, its perfection speaking of unfathomable creative genius, is like seeing a fairy darting above one's head.  Who can explain this?  I picked it up, held it out to Mom, and said, “Look, Mom, I found a bone.  Isn’t it beautiful?”  She said, “It is son!”  Some things are not lost to her mind, gnarled by dementia.   She knows God’s doing when she sees it.  Beauty is here to awaken even the olding mind to the reality of God is still with us.       

The awakening bone

The two awakened.

To Taste a Peach

My lover and I ate a peach yesterday, under a blue sky in the wilds of Appalachia.  Its juice ran down my arm.  It gave me this thought.  Imagine all the time imaginable and all the chances that could chance.  Could all that time and all those chances, alone, come up with the taste of a peach?  Not the peach or the peach tree but the taste?  That is why I worship, adore, and follow as Lord, my God, and His Son, my Savior, Christ Jesus, and rely on His Spirit Holy.  There are no others.  It is Them or nothing and I have to ready myself to meet These Three or ready myself for nothing.  And by nothing, I mean no light, love, touch, smell, flowers, water, food, peace, time…or taste.  Nothing.  The taste of a peach is a sure prelude to meeting, and always being with These Three.    

On Guns

When I turned ten I got a 22 rifle for Christmas, at twelve a 16 gauge shotgun.  These were the most meaningful gifts I received as a young man.  They meant the world to me.  My father, a pastor by vocation, was also a hunter to put food on the table for a large and hungry family.  A part of growing up was owning and knowing how to use and hunt with a gun, target practice, and the expectation that this was an integral part of developing into manhood.  It was also an unspoken rule that deadly force was one of the responsibilities of manhood, hopefully, to never be called for, but understood one’s need to accept the readiness of it.  I still remember the first time I killed a small bird out of wanton ignorance of youthful bravado.  It immediately shamed me, I’ve never done it since, and I’ve never gotten over it.  Gun ownership and killing are a great loss for young men in America.  It is one of the greatest introductions to responsible citizenship and cultural stability that we have laid aside to the detriment of our young men and our culture.    

Our sons teaching our grandsons how to shoot.

 

 

The Beloved Truth

Who is the most beloved person in your life?  Is it your spouse, or a wonderful father, mother, friend, or mentor?  This someone means the world to you.  Now imagine that some townfolk bought a billboard on the main street in your town, placed a picture of this person on it, and then wrote the most shameful and hurtful comments about them for all the town to see.  The whole town rose up with opinions about the sign.  Some said it was ok because they knew of your beloved’s kindness and they would love the ones who put up the sign.  Others said it was wrong because it was mean and false.  Eventually, as with all things, the whole mess was forgotten.  The billboard eventually faded and peeled away.  But the pain of having your most beloved shamed for all the town to see remained.  You told your beloved you were sorry for the hurtful way the town had treated them.  They remained your beloved for you knew something the town folk didn’t; your beloved had saved your life years before showing you how to live in the new life they had given you.  They were not the person on the billboard nor were the statements on the billboard true. They were the person who had saved you from being one of the town folk who used to put up billboards just like that.  You and your Beloved went on with life. You knowing your Beloved keeps a record of everything everyone has ever done and will require an accounting of each of us…one day.