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.