Me versus You

I thought I knew the answers; turns out that I don’t even know the questions. I am nearing the end of my life – well, I am certainly closer to the end than I am to the beginning. And I am just now learning that I can never learn enough to keep up with the changes to the world. No, I’m not talking about new gadgets, new inventions, new ways to do things – I’m talking about changes in people.

What has happened to courtesy? What has happened to respect for a person? What has happened that no one counts for much of anything any longer?

I hold a door open for anyone – not just women, the elderly, or handicapped folks – everyone. Why? Because that is what I was taught – courtesy is indicative of a concern for others. It is indicative of the fact that I am recognizing that person and respecting them. How many folks do you suppose bother to say thank you? I’ve never actually counted but I am going to start doing so just so I can answer that question for my own benefit.

How many times have you wondered just where the world is going? I find that I am more and more frequently wondering just that. When did our love for others become just a self-love world? At what point does our self-love give way to a hate-others sort of society? We are already all about self-love; we are well on our way to hate-others, I believe. I don’t think I want to live in that sort of world, do you?

It’s not about Democrats versus Republicans, blacks versus whites, old versus young or anything else other than me against you. Me is much more important than you. Me is what it is all about – you is so last week.

Are you tired? I am.

Write About a Mess

I hit him - hard. He got back up and wobbled over to where I was standing. His lip was bleeding and my knuckles were skinned. I wasn’t sure but I think one of them was probably broken.

“Is that the best you can do,” he sneered? “My sister used to hit me harder than that and she only weighed about 70 pounds.”

“Listen, I said I don’t want to fight – why can’t you just leave it at that? Why get yourself all smacked around and maybe get some real damage?”

“Real damage? You’re going to pass along some real damage to me?” He looked up into the sky. “I don’t see any pigs flying,” he laughed.

The stretch of his lip when he laughed caused it to start bleeding heavily. Large drops rolled over his bottom lip and spilled to the floor. As I stood there, momentarily mesmerized by the blood flowing from his lips, he swung a huge haymaker right that caught me squarely on the side of the head. My eyes momentarily rolled back in my head and I abruptly sat down; not neatly or gingerly, mind you, but with a huge ‘whump’ that rattled my teeth together.

He stood over me and there was no longer a trace of laughter in his face. I knew what was coming next – a swift kick aimed at my ribs but I managed to partially block it with my left arm and I caught his foot with my right hand and pulled over and upward as hard and fast as I could. He fell backwards and his head smacked against the floor. He wasn’t unconscious but he was temporarily out of the fight. I took advantage of his situation and struggled to my feet. My head was throbbing and my left arm was strangely numb.

I knew that I had to do something to stop this fight; it was way out of hand. I did what any self-respecting boy would do.

“Mom, Mike started a fight and when I hit him back I split his lip. The blood on the floor is from his lip – he made the mess, not me!”

Writer's Assignment - Someone Calls Your Name

It was late and it was cold. The street was dirty, filled with muddy water from the recent, heavy rains. It was dark; most of the street lights shattered by vandals and the few that were left seemed to make it darker rather than lighter. Random pieces of trash floated down the gutters turned impromptu rivers. My shoes were sodden, filled with water from the multiple openings in the soles. Had it still been raining, my heart would have filled with water as well, flowing in through the holes in my soul.

I tried to pull the threadbare coat tighter about my shoulders but it, too, was sopping wet and having little to no effect on keeping me warm. At least the boonie hat had kept most of the rain off my head. Both had come from a thrift store that wasn’t too concerned with how clean things were before they sold them. I had waged a small battle with certain bugs for several days before the folks at the shelter had helped me conquer them. Life hadn’t been all that wonderful lately.
“Hey, Frost, where are you going?”

I stopped dead in my tracks for a few seconds and then slowly turned around.

No one was there. Just more trash and more water. More cold. More emptiness. More darkness.
Had I been so sunk in my misery that I had started imagining that someone cared about me? I started to laugh but the dry, hacking cough I had developed in the last day or so stole my laughter and drowned it in its infancy. I couldn’t even begin to believe that someone had some sympathy or concern for me.

I turned back around and continued my plodding trek down the street; stumbling now and again over things hidden beneath the brown water. I don’t know why I continued in that direction – all directions led to that ultimate destination of a destitute and useless end.

“Hey, Frost, didn’t you hear me? I’m talking to you.”

I stopped again but didn’t turn around. What would be the purpose?

“What do you want?” I whispered.

“You, of course,” the voice spoke. “I want you.”

“Why?”

“Because you have no time left and I am here to collect you.”

Ah, I thought – the Grim Reaper. Thanatos. Apollyon. Abaddon. Death. Well, he would get no argument from me; I was more than ready to leave this mortal coil and shuffle off to my reward or, more likely, to my punishment.

“What took you so long?” I asked. “Why didn’t you show up a couple of years ago when I was on top – why wait until I had lost everything? Why the prolonged suffering?”

“Not my choice, friend. I’m only the transportation; it’s someone else’s decision as to when I show up.”

Surprisingly, the water in my face was warm and the pavement was soft as any mother’s love.

12U Fast Pitch Softball

All this week, my middle granddaughter (Autumn Woods) has been up in Washington, DC playing in the NSA Nationals Tournament for 12U Traveling Fast Pitch softball. Her team lost their first game in the actual "it counts" part of the tournament yesterday and then battled back to get to the final 4. Unfortunately, they lost their second game this morning (double elimination), so they ended up in 4th place. Still pretty darn good out of a field of 17 teams. I didn't have a photo of her in this team's (Galaxy Red) uniform so I used a photo of her from a couple of years ago when she was on the Triple Threat Lady Tigers (10U) and they won the Pony Nationals up in Delaware. Eileen and I went to that tournament and it was quite the show!

Congratulations to you, Autumn, and to Galaxy Red for their fine tournament play!

The 11th Commandment - Tease not lest ye be teased.

I admit that I have a terrible habit - I pick on my grandchildren. Now, I do pick on them, but it isn't out of meanness - mischievousness would better fit the situation. Unfortunately, as they have grown older, they have learned how to play the game and I am frequently on the receiving end of their wit.

My youngest grandchild is August, who is almost 9 years old. When she was about 4 or 5, she was riding in the back seat of the car and she was pretending to be a policewoman writing tickets. I'm sure you can guess who was the recipient of all those tickets - it appears that I couldn't do anything right. Finally, I complained about all the tickets and why she was being so mean to me. Well, she didn't answer me directly - she merely said, "I love my job!"

Fast forward to this past Sunday - she was going to church with us and, as per our routine, I was teasing her. After this long back and forth about something, she just kind of shook her head and said to me "Grandaddy, you have sooo many things wrong with you."

Out of the mouths of babes.

Have I ever mentioned that Eileen and I have 2 dogs? Here is a photo of Shamus Lochlan MacGregor when he was just a couple of months old. He and Eileen fell in love with each other at first sight. She was "browsing" at the pet store while I was doing something else in the mall and she said that all these folks walked by him and he just lay in his cage looking at them. However, when she walked by, he got up, came to the window and put his paw on the window so she put her hand to the window as well and they just stared at each other for a while.

As fortune would have it, our youngest daughter (Katie) happened to be in the mall and when Eileen saw her and told her about the puppy, she wanted to go see him. I had already checked on the price and told my daughter that there was no way I was going to spend that kind of money on a dog (big bucks!). Anyway, while back in the pet store, Katie had the girl get the puppy out and give her to Eileen. Tears just blew loose from her eyes and I knew that I was sunk - big bucks or no, that puppy had to come home with us.

I'll have to tell you the story of our other puppy some other time - I don't have a photo of her in this computer.

Joplin, MO

I was involved last night in leading a session of The Truth Project at a friend's house and when we ended the session and I asked about prayer requests, one of the folks indicated that he was mad at God for the damage done to people's lives in Joplin, MO. He asked the proverbial question "How can a merciful God allow these things to happen?" He didn't say this, but implicit in it, I believe was that God was at fault for the loss of lives and the loss of homes and businesses.

I think that is a fair question to ask but a hard one to answer and unless one is solidly of the belief that God knows best, there can probably be no answer that would satisfy those who do not have that solidity of belief.

We could talk about the fall of man bringing all sorts of calamity into the world; we could talk about that in a natural world, these events will always happen; we could perhaps come up with many other explanations - but there is no way that we can truly know the answer. And, the question presupposes that life on this earth is preferable to anything else that God might have in store for us. While death (especially to a family member or close friend) is a terrible tragedy for those remaining, is it a tragedy to those who died? We are all going to die at some point (unless, as I frequently ask of God, I am caught up in the Rapture instead!!) and make the transition from life on earth to life in heaven or hell. The real tragedy, of course, is those who die without Christ as their Lord and Savior. I believe, in the final analysis, that is the only real tragedy of this world; everythng else is short of tragedy even if long on pain and suffering.

Just wondering

I heard (briefly) President Obama's talk about Israel, "Palestine" and a 2-state solution to their issues. Just wondering why Obama thinks that Israel will agree to the 1967 borders that had Israel at just 9 miles wide in one spot, had Jerusalem partitioned so that part was Israeli and part "Palestinian", that had Jerusalem's Jewish holy sites predominantly within the non-Jewish part of Jerusalem. Jews were not allowed to visit their holy sites prior to 1967; 86 (or so) mosques were destroyed in Jerusalem under Muslim rule. What is the purpose of Obama's "solution"? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me, particularly considering the fact that the "Palestinians" constantly send thousands of rockets into Israel with the borders as they are... imagine if Israel was back to its 1967 borders.

And, just for the record, "Palestine" and "Palestinians" are in quotes because there is no such group of people. These people were either Turkish (way back), Syrian, Lebanese or Jordanians living in that area prior to the establishment of Israel as a nation. There has never been a state/government that was known as "Palestine".

Here's the next part of my 60-word sentence story.

The band played on but I was in no mood for frenetic frivolity as I furiously stomped away from those frantic fools infatuated with the flugelhorn-playing fop tooting like tomorrow was never going to arrive and we could continue to frolic in the fatuous style of fulsome lasses let loose upon a hapless world of binge-dancing and sloe gin fizzes.

Didn’t they know that the Four Horsemen were approaching and our way of life was teetering precariously on the precipice of destruction and doom? Life isn’t just about fun and frivolity; someone has to be aware that an immense danger to our way of life lurks in the shadows and hidden corners of our foolish society.

I am that someone. No, I don’t look all that impressive and I can’t leap tall buildings at a single bound but underneath this mild-mannered exterior resides a Hero. I see things no one else sees, I hear things that go unheard in the public venue, and I sense things that those intent on pursuing mindless activity cannot sense.

But back to the band and the fools dancing and drinking. They were celebrating the end of the year when they should have been planning for the end of the world. All the signs were in place and anyone with the teensiest bit of sense could tell that disaster was not far down the road; in fact, it was actually within sight. Sense, however, was no longer in vogue and hadn’t been for some time. Probably disappeared forever about the time of the World Trade Center disaster – 9/11/2001. The date was significant but no one had figured it out but me. Add all the digits together and what do you get? 2021. That would be the year it all happened. And the year end they were celebrating was 2020.

So how did I know that adding all those numbers together was what one had to do to arrive at the date the world would end? I don’t know but it was apparent, that’s all I can say. As far as the actual day, I wasn’t sure – it could be September 11th, or it could be November 9th depending on whether the 9/11 was month/day or day/month. See, I told you those numbers were significant!

However, common sense, again, dictated that it would be one or the other of those 2 days. So, I had either 8 months and 10 days to save the world or 10 months and 8 days to save it. I was secretly hoping for 11/9 but I was fearful that it was more likely to be 9/11. 9/11/2021 would be a Saturday and 11/9/2021 would be a Tuesday… hmm, which of those was the more significant? Aha! It had to be Tuesday – after all, the word Tuesday comes from the Old English Tiwesdaeg and the Middle English Tewesday both of which translated from the Latin dies Martis or MARS! The god of War! How appropriate – the world was going to end in a massive war.

Hold on just a minute, hoss. I shouldn’t jump to conclusions – I should think about the possibility of it being Saturday. So, the word Saturday comes from the Roman god Saturn who was the god of agriculture and harvest. Therefore, it could still be 9/11 since there would undoubtedly be a harvesting of souls when the earth was destroyed. And, perhaps the harvest was going to have something to do with food – a pandemic caused by the outbreak of some hitherto unknown fungus or spores developing on the food supply! Oh, how devious it was all getting to be.

Well, regardless of whether I had 8 ½ months or 10 ½ months, I needed to get busy – I didn’t know how the earth would be destroyed so how could I stop it? Obviously I needed more information. And I knew just where to get it.

With a certain degree of disdain, I looked back at the festivities one more time before I left. Fools, I thought, they’re just fools. Too bad my girl friend Rosetta was part of that crowd – I was gonna miss her. Still, sacrifices had to be made, so I resolutely turned my face away and started the lonely trek away from the party. I hadn’t been having a good time, anyway, since I can’t dance and alcohol turns my skin a crimson red with yellow splotches – some kind of allergic reaction the doctors said. Rosetta, on the other hand, loved to dance and could drink almost anyone under the table. I have seen her drink a full quart of tequila in a night of partying and still get up at 7:00 to go bear hunting. Tough, tough girl, that one.

Fortunately, it wasn’t too far to 34th and Vine – that’s where I would find out the rest of what I needed to know. There’s a certain gypsy that lives there – Madame Rue. She looks a little odd with that gold-capped tooth but I’ve tried her products before and they work. Hey, how did you think I would get a sweet gal like Rosetta without Madame Rue’s help? That little potion she mixed up in the sink worked wonders for my love life.

Now, though, I needed to think about how best to approach Madame Rue. If she was aware that I was trying to find out things like how the world would end, she might charge me more money than I could afford. After all, my government stipend would only cover so much. I know, I know – I’m supposed to be happy with my government dole but sometimes I think that it might be better to get a real job. Gosh, I hope my case worker doesn’t read this – I’d be in real trouble with him. He might have me assigned to the Obama Youth Brigade and those are some real hard-core, scary folks. Gives me the shivers to think about it.

In less than 10 minutes, I was at Madame Rue’s but she was closed. Gosh, what had I been thinking – it was a quarter after midnight on January the 1st! I just shook my head and started to turn away when I noticed that the door to her pad was slightly ajar. I know, I know… one is not supposed to break into someone else’s house but the door was open and it wasn’t like she didn’t know me.

A 60-word sentence.

The band played on but I was in no mood for frenetic frivolity as I furiously stomped away from those frantic fools infatuated with the flugelhorn-playing fop tooting like tomorrow was never going to arrive and we could continue to frolic in the fatuous style of fulsome lasses let loose upon a hapless world of binge-dancing and sloe gin fizzes.

Write about - Seeing Red

I have been fascinated with the history of Constantinople (or modern Istanbul) for ages and was eager to visit the city for the first time. Although I was traveling alone, I was not the least bit lonely as I was so eagerly anticipating seeing the city and its many historical sites that I felt no need for companionship. The Turks of Istanbul are notably friendly and what little loneliness I might have felt was vanquished by sharing cups of strong Turkish coffee with many of the local people. Interestingly enough, it is sipped with a sugar cube held between the front teeth. Many are the citizens of that area who no longer have front teeth!

I spent my first night in the Kariye Hotel in Edirnekapi, about 3 kilometers from the center of Istanbul, anxious for the morning to arrive so I could start exploring. I chose this hotel because it is in close proximity to the Edirnekapı Martyr’s Cemetery and I was interested in starting my historical exploration there.

The Edirnekapı Martyr’s Cemetery is an important burial ground for Turkish citizens. It is located outside Edirnekapı, the Gate of Charisius of the city wall, on top of the sixth hill of the old city. It was originally formed for the Ottoman soldiers who fell during the Siege of Constantinople in 1453. However, it also holds other folk who are associated with the Ottoman Empire in other ways.

It is rumored that it holds the final remains of Hayreddin Barbarossa, the scourge of the Mediterranean in the first half of the 16th century. He was appointed as the admiral of the Ottoman fleet in 1533 after he captured Algiers in 1529. In 1534, he conquered all of Tunisia. Additionally, he defeated the fleet of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1538. He was always a favorite of mine and I was anxious to see if I could find his gravesite.

Unfortunately, due to the vagaries of travel and the tap water that I drank the night before, I was subjected to a violent bout of Montezuma’s revenge (or more properly I suppose, by Muhammad’s revenge since Constantinople was last captured by Sultan Muhammad II). It was, therefore, close to dark when I felt well enough to start my exploration of the cemetery.

While I am not particularly superstitious, it was a chilling and somewhat menacing place to enter so close to sundown. Nevertheless, I gathered up my courage and walked into the cemetery determined to find Barbarossa’s gravesite. The late afternoon was still and unnaturally quiet and it caused me to search more frantically so I could leave the area before it became fully dark.

It wasn’t until after the sky had become fairly dark that I wandered into the section of the cemetery where it appeared that most of the inhabitants were sailors of some sort. I couldn’t read the headstones all that well, of course, but there were plenty of tombs marked with sailing ships, sea eagles and other indications that this section was primarily for sailors.

As it became more fully dark, I walked around a monument that was larger than most and almost ran into a small, bearded man with a turban on his head sitting cross-legged on the ground. He paid me little heed, however, and even though I attempted to apologize, he ignored me. For a while, I just stared at him, wishing I could talk to him. Not knowing exactly how to respond to his indifference, though, I decided that perhaps I should just leave.

The next day, I visited one of the larger museums in Istanbul and came across a painting of a man that bore an uncanny resemblance to the man I had seen in the cemetery. Moving closer to the painting, I read the inscription under it: “Hayreddin Barbarossa, also known as Redbeard the Pirate”. I couldn’t believe it! It was Red I had been seeing the night before!

Write about - Waiting

Weighting? Is that like the butcher holding his thumb on the scale while he is weighing out your lamb chops? Maybe it’s putting sandbags in the back of your pickup after a deep snow. Or, I suppose, it could be adding weight to the hook with the bacon on it to get to the 6-foot gray shark faster (after all, if he is full of bacon, perhaps he won’t eat the kids, Andy!).

In my case, weighting is what I do when I get on the scale at the doctor’s office – well, maybe that’s de-weighting since I take everything out of m pockets including the lint.

Personally, I am not in favor of homonyms.

An Unusual Phobia

Okay, let’s do this right – let’s inquire into the meaning of “Unusual Phobia” – break it down into its component parts:

Unusual - uncommon in amount or degree

Phobia - a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it.

Well, there’s my fear of falling off high places like cliffs and high bridges or tops of buildings and while that fear is persistent, it isn’t irrational and it isn’t unusual. After all, falling off high places is inimical to life as we know it so it could hardly be a phobia.

Okay, how about my fear of aliens conquering the earth? Nope – that’s not it; while that is more than likely uncommon in degree and may be irrational, it is not a persistent thing with me (I only worry about it when I’m awake) so I guess it isn’t a phobia.

You know what? This writing assignment was a little more difficult than I originally thought. What would be a fear that I would have a compelling, uncommon desire to avoid? Well, there’s the movie Chamber of Fear with Boris Karloff? Maybe that would count since it has fear in the title? No; I like Boris Karloff and only werewolf movies really scare me – I mean, OMG – the hair growing on the arms and the claws growing out from the ends of the fingers! Now that is scary but it’s hard to have a phobia about something that isn’t real (they aren’t real, are they?).

An unusual phobia...

Okay, how about a phobia of the mailman? After all, they deliver things from the government and I DEFINITELY have a phobia (or at least a paranoia) about stuff that comes from the government so maybe by extension that could be an unusual phobia.

Nah – that’s probably not unusual enough to satisfy the Eradicator of Egregious Elucidations for whom I must write. Not that she is so obviously evil, mind you, but misplace a comma or muddle your syntax and beware the Wrath of the Wicked Witch of Wordsmithing!

I mean, come on! I don’t think this is in the running for a Pulitzer or anything, is it? Or a Newberry award? A Reader’s Digest feature of the month? I didn’t think so.

I guess I’ll just have to admit I don’t have any phobias that are unusual and take my lumps.

My Testimony

Let me start by saying I was always a good kid – not that I didn’t do anything wrong but I generally had no malice toward anyone and was not normally inclined to be dishonest. I did have a tendency to run away though - not to get away from home but to go adventuring. In fact, the worst thing that I can remember doing as a kid was squirting mustard all over the white leather seat of a Cadillac convertible when I was a teenager. No reason to do it, just a spur of the moment thoughtlessness that I have regretted ever since. I didn’t have the courage at the time I did it to confess to the person and take my lumps. In fact, I wasn’t even sure where we were when I did it – I wasn’t paying any attention to where we were – so even if I had managed to work up the courage, I wouldn’t have known where to go to confess.

I had attended church off and on while I was growing up – Baptist church with my grandmother, Episcopalian when I lived with an aunt and uncle for 7 years, and occasionally Methodist when I was an adult. I think I have always believed that there was a God and that He had created the universe and everything in it but I was not as certain that He cared about me or even knew about me. God was more like a distant, remote being than a personal God. Jesus was pretty much just a good guy in my mind.

Eileen was a Christian when we got married but I wasn’t. Had someone asked me, I would have said that I was of course a Christian – I believed in God and I had certainly heard of Jesus. Because Eileen was a Christian and wanted to go to church, I was willing to go with her just to please her plus I figured it would do the kids good. I could tolerate it plus since we went to Baptist churches, there was always good food involved.

My least favorite time of church, however, was the “invitation”. I could not stand to sing 6 or 7 verses of a song while waiting for someone to “accept Christ”. In fact, I was pretty certain that there were people designated to go down front if there weren’t any real suckers in the crowd that day. I figured they were planted there to break the ice and entice folks to “walk the aisle” – or, as I preferred to think of it – to “walk the plank”. It was always an uncomfortable time for me but only because I was anxious to be done with church.

One Sunday, we were on about the 4th verse of the invitational song and I distinctly remember wondering how much longer we would be singing and whether or not I could deal with it. I was bored to tears.

Out of nowhere, with no reason that I could think of, I turned to Eileen and asked her if she would go down front with me. I’m not sure who was more surprised – she or me. Fortunately, she recovered before I did and quickly agreed to go with me.

As we moved out to the aisle, I had no idea why I was going down front – it was certainly not my idea. As we started down the aisle, a truly strange thing happened to me – I was 2 people at the same time. There was the me that was walking down the aisle and there was a me that was watching me from behind. The me that was watching from behind was trying to convince the me in front that I was making a huge mistake; that it was all foolishness and there was no such thing as a personal relationship with Christ. I would have to be as dull and as mindless as I thought all the other so-called Christians were. For no reason that I know of, I ignored the second me and continued down the aisle and as soon as I told the pastor that I wanted to accept Christ, the second me disappeared.

I have since heard hundreds of testimonies about people having a “road to Damascus” sort of conversion, or being in such pain and despair that Christ was the only way out, or any number of reasons that they just had to reach out to God and beg for mercy. I, to my knowledge, had no such reason. Like I said, I was a good kid. I was a good adult. I was kind, I was honest and I was generous. I had good kids and a good wife. I had a good job that I enjoyed. I did not know of any reason I had that would cause me to reach out to God.

So why did I ask Eileen to walk down front with me? I don’t know for sure, but I am pretty well convinced that for some reason God did not want to wait on me any longer to make up my mind about Him. Perhaps He knew that if I had to be brought down to my knees in order to realize my desperate need for Him, I might in stubbornness decide to ignore Him. I have, after all, been known to cut off my nose to spite my face – it is not one of my more desirable traits but it is part of who I am.

Like so many new Christians, I just knew that since I had accepted Christ as my savior all my troubles were over. I wish I could say that is exactly how it worked out but I can’t. It has taken some years but I now understand that Satan works hard to destroy the faith of new Christians so that their eagerness and excitement will be tamped down and they will not be good witnesses for Christ. If a new Christian is having pain and issues, how likely is it that he or she will work to bring others into the kingdom? Satan nearly got me and, in fact, he did drag me through a dry, terrible desert in my relationship with God. He nearly destroyed my marriage. He set me up for a horrible relationship in a church that I felt truly invested in. For a time, he managed to convince me that joy in Christ is not really possible.

Over the years since my acceptance of Christ, I have on occasion been uncomfortable in my relationship with God but I don’t think I have doubted His concern over me or His influence in my life. I have been rebellious and I am so grateful that He forgives me even of that rebellion. I have allowed Satan to deceive me and yet God maintained His protection of me and His love for me.

I can truly say that my life has been infinitely better with Christ. I can say with certainty that God loves me. I can attest to the power of God through prayer. I have witnessed miracles. I have felt the spirit of God directing me to pray specifically for people that I had no desire to pray for. I have laid hands on those people and prayed God’s blessing on them because He said to. I continue to be amazed at God’s goodness and His mercies. I am grateful to be able to claim that I am His even though I do not deserve to be.

A “Certain” Place On The Road Map

Have you ever been looking at a map and had a name on there capture your imagination – that one certain place? I mean, just look at a map of Florida – near Panama City. Heading west on the shore road you come across Laguna Beach (isn’t that in California?), Hollywood Beach (please!), Inlet Beach (whatever), Seagrove Beach (a grove in the sea??) and then there’s Seaside. Seaside – not Seaside Beach, not Seaside Resort, not Seaside Preserve – just Seaside. Kind of distinguished-sounding but not pretentious; the kind of a place where it might be something different from the typical Florida town whose single purpose is to separate your money from your wallet. Maybe there would be real people in there, not a crowd of noisy, sunburned Yankee tourists with 6 bratty kids whining to buy just one more alligator head or one more shark tooth bolo tie. Or maybe that classic pink flamingo to put in the yard back in the Bronx.

And, maybe it would be a place that didn’t require one to recycle, use a goat to mow the lawn, ride a bike to work, have no more than 1.4 kids and buy only Fair Trade organic, vegetarian food from certified indigenous third-world people. A place that used old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs and not those “triple-tube bulbs” that look like recycled DNA and provide just enough light to enable you to tell whether you’re eating tofu or hummus. My psyche was not ready for a place where everyone had the body of a concentration camp veteran and believed that a person with a body mass index greater than 10 was a sloth, a glutton and quite probably a mass-murderer of innocent cows, pigs and chickens who are, after all, just other people. I’m sorry, but my idea of a good-looking woman is not someone whose ribs are more pronounced than the tail on a starving Florida gator.

Okay, so it was winter and there wouldn’t be that “beautiful Florida beach” sort of experience but, hey, that was okay. No one wants to look at this body anyway. I was hoping that there would be a quiet, reasonable place to have a massacred cow for dinner; maybe an eclectic bookstore or antique shop to browse in without seeing even one pink flamingo, and a little coffee shop to drink a cuppa joe made from coffee beans basically stolen from Juan Valdez before we headed back to Panama City. Sure, I was asking a lot of that “certain” place on the road map but if you’re going to dream then you ought to dream big.

We left Panama City in a light-hearted mood, certain that we would find a truly unique town in the midst of the tired, shabby and slightly depressing Florida countryside. Sometimes I have a dream in which someone dredges out the entire center of the state and leaves only the coast line; kind of a reverse atoll, I suppose. Turn it into a gigantic lake surrounded by a thin line of sand and stock it with largemouth bass and bluegill. Maybe leave an island or two with a fresh water spring and some oranges, grapefruit, watermelon and perhaps a boiled peanut stand.

It took almost an hour to reach Seaside and we had to endure all the “beach” towns along the way – Burger Kings, Pizza Huts, Wal-Marts, souvenir stands, and endless traffic with everyone thinking they had the same rights and privileges that I have. Maybe riding a bike to work wouldn’t be such a bad idea for all those other people – that would make my driving experience much more enjoyable. Wait, I forgot, those bike people think they should be allowed to share the road with cars and hold up traffic so everyone can see and admire their spandexed butts and insect-head helmets. Well, when I’m king, I’ll come up with something to fix the problem of crowded roads.

The sun was setting as we entered Seaside and the large sand dunes blocked virtually all of the beach and the water. We parked in the free municipal parking that encircled a beautifully manicured town square and crossed the road down to the quaint shops and bistros on the shore side of the sand dunes. After climbing a few wooden stairs that led over the dunes, we could finally see the beach. The sky over the Gulf was populated with dark scudding clouds and the wind was whipping the breaking waves into grey-green spindrift. Not exactly a promising initial impression of my fantasy town but even great places have bad weather now and again – I wasn’t going to give up just yet even though my spirits were sinking somewhat.

After taking a few pictures of each other standing in the gazebo-like structure that dominated the dunes and taking the mandatory few steps on the beach, we were ready for some hot food and warm drinks. Although there hadn’t been a lot of people on the streets and sidewalks when we first arrived, by the time we came back over the dunes, the town seemed to be deserted. All the shops we had passed to get to the beach were closed; shuttered tightly against the coming night. Still, all was not lost. Across the town square, there were a few shops that appeared to be open so we headed in that direction hoping to at least find a place to have some coffee.

I have to admit that the town and its buildings were delightful – a blending of Norman Rockwell’s America and Architectural Digest. Who needed big box Wal Marts and cookie cutter Burger Kings? My spirits rebounded slightly and I began to think that maybe Seaside was exactly what I had hoped it to be.

Somehow, the few people we saw in the shops seemed to be slightly out of focus; a little blurred around the edges. Maybe it was just the salt spray blown over the dunes that coated the windows and slightly refracted the light from the interior. As we got to the first little shop, the proprietor locked the door and turned the sign from “Open” to “Closed” and each succeeding store followed suit. I don’t know, maybe there was a town ordinance that required everyone to close up at the same time; maybe you had to live there to buy anything. It just seemed kind of rude. As we continued to walk, we heard laughter coming from a building that turned out to be the local theatre – the Seaside Repertory Theatre. To me, the laughter sounded hollow and kind of forced; sort of like the reception that Nancy Pelosi gets when she tells a joke in the House of Representatives. I had absolutely no desire to see or hear what they were laughing at; it might have been something that I wouldn’t have found funny. In fact, I have watched horror movies where there was exactly that sort of laughter just before someone got killed. Nope, no theatre for me.

By now, it was almost totally dark and the few lights in the town did little to dispel the darkness; in fact, it seemed to deepen it. Shadows were not just dark, they were pools of blackness so deep that had there been light in them, it would not have escaped. The wind whipped across the empty streets and between the buildings, blowing grit into our faces no matter which way we turned. I had not yet gotten scared, but it wasn’t out of the question that it would happen.

We decided to head back to the car and as we turned to go, I failed to see that there was a curb and a step down to the street. Or, more likely, some evil spirit or zombie got tired of my being in his town and gave me a shove. At any rate, I did a combination of the Texas two-step and the hop, skip and jump of track and field fame before I landed ignominiously on my face. Ignoring the blood and pain, I grabbed Eileen’s hand and made a beeline for the car. Once in the car, I felt a bit foolish about my reaction to what was probably just clumsiness on my part, so I suggested that we drive through the town to see some of the homes. Oh, big mistake.

Only about 1 in every 20 or so houses had lights and the light seemed shallow and lacking in substance. And the silence; how could you see tree branches waving in the wind but not hear any sound? The blackness even seemed to swallow our conversation. No, I don’t think we were whispering but I might be wrong. Just like in town, there were no people on the streets but we couldn’t see anyone in any of the houses, either. Where was everyone? Even the lighted houses started seeming ominous so I decided to turn around and head back to Panama City. Somehow, though, every road we went down seemed to bring us back to where we first went into the residential area but we were always heading back into the area rather than out of it. No, I don’t know how that was possible but there you go. Finally, the town lost interest in us and turned us loose. You know, after Seaside, I kind of like Burger Kings and Wal Marts now. Even sunburned tourists are okay.

Once, When I Was Young

Once, when I was young, I thought that I would be an important and significant person who would be remembered by the world for ages to come. My name would be in books and people would know who I was.

By the time I reached my twenties, there was nothing that made that seem to be an insurmountable goal although I had not yet achieved anything noteworthy and a doubt or two occasionally sneaked into my thoughts.

At the age of 39, I realized that I had not done anything that I considered to be all that important or significant and it was becoming apparent that achieving this status was going to be much more difficult than I had imagined. And, to further confuse things, I came to the conclusion that I would not live to be 40 years old. It wasn’t a morbid thought; it was just something that I believed would happen. Well, like so many other times in my life, I was wrong.

I am now 63 and my concept of what is important and significant has changed fundamentally from when I was young. My original (well, actually my copycat) thinking that I would be significant has been transformed to the point that I now know that importance and significance are essentially internal issues. How important and significant has my life been to me rather than to the world?

Here is WHAT is important and significant to me: my loving wife, my three wonderful children, my seven terrific grandchildren. Some of my importance and significance is measured in their happiness and their contributions to this world. However, what truly MAKES me an important and significant person is that Jesus Christ loves me and accepts me as His own.

And, my name is in one and only one book – the Lamb’s Book of Life. I need no more significance and importance than that and I don’t even deserve that.

Shadows

Shadows

Shadows. Illusions. Shape-shifters. Perhaps cosmic dust that had been spreading since creation. None of us knew what the truth was. However, it was definitely true that the mood of depression and defeat that encapsulated all of us was palpable. Sure, we were all hand-chosen for this mission and had suffered through extensive psychological testing prior to that selection. A more stable group of people could not have been found and, yet, all of us were unnerved by the shadows. Silva had been transformed from a man with huge reservoirs of strength and an unshakeable faith in his own courage and capabilities to a near-catatonic lump of quivering flesh. We debated the merits of leaving him behind as we struggled on. No one wanted to leave him but we had no way to carry him without endangering ourselves. He cried silently as we stuffed him in a cleft in the overhanging rock that almost completely hid him. What we were hiding him from was unknown to us. Those of us who believed in a merciful God said a quiet prayer for him, knowing full well that he would soon be dead.

Now there were only 6 of us left out of the original 35. None of us could even guess what had killed the people we were leaving behind – they had just fallen and died. Each was unmarked, with no wound or evidence of what had killed them. Yet, each face was a grotesque death-mask and terror was plainly etched into their features. We tried to carry the first couple of casualties with us back to the ship but it was beyond our capability. In the perpetual shadows surrounding us, each of us could only look out for ourselves and our own ability to stay upright. Even had there been good lighting, the footing was treacherous. With the shifting shadows, being responsible for dead weight was just not possible.

I took the point only because I was the leader; I wanted to remain in that cleft with Silva and close my eyes. Shut out those illusions, those shapes. Fear is powerful and when all you can see are shadows and those shadows continually evolve into something that reaches deep into our psyche, the fear mutates into something enormously destructive. I had faced dangers and the fear that comes with danger multiple times in my career, but in every case I could see what it was that I was dealing with. Not here. Not even the powerful lamps we carried could remove the shadows – it was like the light was swallowed up; like it couldn’t exist among the shadows; like it didn’t belong. Only 3 more kilometers to our ship and we could leave this place forever.

“Lieutenant, Stewart is missing!” Evans shouted. “He was right behind me and now he’s gone!” Panic was evident in Evans’ voice and that was just as dangerous as the shadows.

“Shut up, Evans! Just stop and get a grip; there’s no reason to lose control!”

What a joke. We had lost control within 24 hours of arriving in this God-forsaken place.

“Everyone just turn around. We’ll backtrack a bit and see if we can find him.”

There was muttering at that but they did turn around and walked slowly back the way we had come. It was a testament to their courage and the training they had received. We were scared and nearly broken, but we were still men. I was scared and close to panic myself; I admit it. Stewart had been riding trail and I was now riding trail. I kept turning and looking behind me, expecting to see whatever it was that was killing us; expecting to die next. Before that could happen, though, the column stopped.

“Here he is, Lieutenant; he’s dead,” Evans muttered. “He looks just like the rest of them did.”

Evans was right – Stewart had the same look of horror on his face that all the other men had when we found them. Saying a silent prayer, I ordered the march to resume, leaving Stewart in the dust and shadows.

We were less than a kilometer from the ship when it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard anything from the men following me for some time. I stopped and forced myself to turn around. Emptiness. Emptiness and shadows. Emptiness and fear. Who knew when the last man died or fell over? My heart hammered at my chest and I knew that the shadows had won.

With grim determination, I turned back toward the ship and started to run. In one of those inexplicable twists of life, the shadows momentarily cleared and I could see the ship standing tall and proud and ready to return me to safety and sanity. I pushed harder in an effort to reach the ship before the shadows returned but I could tell it would be in vain. I could feel the breath of some unknown thing close at my back. I pushed myself harder in an effort to escape. The last thing I saw was the shadows closing back in over the ship and I knew it was too late; too far; too difficult. My screams went unheard by anything human.