“You don’t know who I am, do you?” That’s the way she put the question to me at a recent gathering. I honestly did not know how to answer her question. For the life of me I could not put a name on her face. I did remember having met her several years ago. Not sure where or when. My mind worked rapidly but to no avail. She was standing there with her question in front of me: “You don’t know who I am, do you?” Inside, I was dealing with embarrassment. My good ol’ sense of inadequacy rose up […]
Trivial Pursuits
The Calvinistic work ethic that so many of us Protestants seemed to have inherited from God knows where [and I hope God knows why!] makes us suspect of people who would engage – or even think about it – in trivial pursuits or idle conversations. According to this inbred doctrine, we must spend our lives in an orderly pursuit of worthwhile goals. We should always work like the devil to produce results that are clearly measurable and have some utilitarian purpose. In my collegiate years, Florence Nightingale pinpointed this notion and grabbed my […]
Risky Business
Seems like only yesterday when someone hauled my scrawny mind to the first grade, singing “School days, school days, dear old Golden Rule days…” That’s when we all got our first Coca-Cola ruler with the Golden Rule written on it. Not only was I exposed to “reading and ‘riting and ‘rithmetic”, but learning how to do unto others as you would want others to do unto you. Radical thought. Education is risky business. Remember the adage “What they don’t know won’t hurt them”; the converse of that oversimplification might also apply. The process of learning is […]
Here Be Dragons
Sometimes I depend on the handwriting on the walls to get my bearings each day. We have a clock that shines its information on our ceiling each night, giving us the time, the temperatures inside and outside. Those are important pieces of information to help me get my bearings as I go to sleep and when I wake. Smelling the coffee sets off a cozy perspective that the divine has come down from heaven to our kitchen, and all is right with the world. So far. But then I read the newspaper, and everything goes […]
To Kill a Mockingbird
The only gun I own these days is a dead one. It’s old and rusty and hangs on the wall in my study with a rose in the barrel. Walmart doesn’t carry the ammunition for guns used in the recent war of northern aggression. In its day it did a lot of damage for a lost cause for which so many gave the last full measure of devotion and from which so many today will not get over. So the century and a half year old Springfield just hangs there passively remembering those dark days of […]
Shall We Dance?
Way back in my childhood hometown’s quest to understand God and the religions of the world, the only real question that needed an answer from the Almighty was: Can Baptist dance? Obvious answer was…some can and some can’t! Of course, they spent their youth groups figuring out just how dancing would lead down that slippery slope to sloppier sins that would give God hissy fits. Dancers turn up in the strangest places in scripture. In Jeremiah’s prophetic vision of Israel’s return and restoration: Then shall the maidens rejoice in the dance, and the young men […]
Outdoing Ourselves
It’s one of those subtle terms we use to describe something in the superlative ranges of human behavior or achievement. It basically means to exceed or surpass the normally expected. It implies a sense of competition whereby someone outdoes the opponent in a particular feat. And when we speak of outdoing ourselves, we mean competing with self. But the term really becomes a mixture of meanings at times. For instance, if you “outdo” yourself on something, does that mean that you are outdone? In the South, that particular term means that you are […]
A Man on the Moon
Superman was a super hero in my childhood days of yore. He could leap tall buildings with a single bound and travel places faster than a speeding bullet, unless someone hit him in the head with kryptonite. When Aunt Liba bought Superman capes for Ben, Jr. and me, we failed in our attempted flight from the roof of the garage. We did fly, but did not prepare for so quick a landing. Mama’s exclamatory disclaimer for such a venture: “you had no more business doing that than a man on the moon.” Little did she realize at that moment that […]
The Energy of Expectations
When a fifteen-year-old tennis player ends up on center court at Wimbledon, she commands a fervor of respectful energy from the spectators in the stadium and on the screens in our dens. They can no longer just be spectators, because their hopes and dreams are pinned to this courageous would-be champion. Their expectations become the magic force of momentum felt by the young lady in tennis attire at the center of the world’s best venue. That’s simply a snapshot of just how great expectations can be harnessed as a form of energy felt round the world. […]
A Place Called Home
The good ol’ summertime leads many of us down the primrose paths of vacations and travels to a variety of places all over the world. Or it might just be a short spin down memory lane to visit kith and kin. Suitcases, which were dormant during the winter, are filled to the brim with clothing and sundry other articles necessary for survival on the road. Cameras are loaded with fresh batteries, wallets with cash, cars washed, and houses tided in preparation for the long-awaited journeys. Time to leave what seems to be the ho-hum ordinariness of everyday […]