Quiet Joy

Normally I rise and start work between 3 and 4a.m., courtesy of God’s blessing of prostate cancer, but Saturday morning He granted me the grace to sleep till five.

I pad out to the living room and boot the computer to begin my day’s work.

Our miniature grandfather clock ticks away minutes and chimes the hour. My fish swims back and forth in the aquarium beside my desk. Ginny’s useless bird, Fancy, preens in his cage.

Outside darkness melts into a gray dawn. Ground fog drifts outside my window obscuring view of other houses down the street. That mist dissolves into a low drizzle of rain. Were I filming a Dracula movie, this would be a perfect day to shoot.

I intended to mow the lawn today but the rain cancels that project. I feel the comfortable pleasant relief you feel when something you planned to do but really didn’t want to gets thwarted by outside circumstance.

As I thought and prayed through my morning devotions, God Almighty did not fuss at me for a change.

The news tells me that a city council in England, in a movement to be all inclusive, has made applications to drive a taxi available in Braille for blind people. Once, the church I sometimes attend initiated a campaign to be “All Inclusive” in our community. Everybody in the pool! I see a parallel between the church’s movement and the one by that city council.

But as I started to get critical in my thinking, I also pondered that invitation in the last chapter of the Bible: “The Spirit and the bride say, Come . And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely”.

Whosoever will may come.

And I pondered Mark 8:34 where Jesus said, “Whosever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me”.

An exclusive all inclusiveness.

A no nonsense all inclusiveness with barbs.

But, not being a blind taxi driver, I need not concern myself over much about such things. The Lord knoweth His own.

I hear the clock radio in the bedroom beep 6a.m., Ginny’s usual wake-up time. She ignores the sound. After ten minutes, I go in and punch the button to stop the thing. She mutters a sleepy, “Thank you” and snuggles down under the covers for another couple of hours.

I answer a handful of e-mails, read blogs and news, think about work on the will of God manuscript and about the transcribing of Barbara White’s Prayer Diary.

I hear the rain on the roof falling heaver now.

Ginny wakes and comes out in her robe for coffee; her sleep-tousled white hair forms a silver halo around her face in the lamp light. She zombies awhile, sipping coffee as we discuss going out for breakfast. Decide not to.

As she started cooking, I shave, shower, and dress in tan slacks with a favorite tan wool sweater, loose enough to be comfortable, warm enough to be cozy.

In the kitchen I find her at the stove wearing her sweats. I slip my hands under her sweatshirt. She slaps my fingers away with a smile of pleasure and promise. At the sink I wash yesterday’s dishes as she fries bacon, cracks eggs, and stirrs grits.

She serves my bowl of grits so hot they could smelt iron ingots. Just right! Touch a pat of butter to those grits and it disappears into a pool of gold. Ginny fills the pepper shaker and I sprinkle a constellation of black stars on the white surface.

The Lord Jesus has granted me a morning without my hands shaking today so I can spoon my food without slopping it all over me. Thank You, Lord.

I lather jalapeno jelly on my toast. Ginny’s mother bottles this green jelly and sends me a few jars every Christmas. This morning feels more like Christmas than Christmas did.

We retired to our chairs in the living room. Ginny reads her Martha Grimes novel; I hold a musty volume of theology unopened in my lap, a book which interests me but would not keep me from drowsing off.

I run bristled cleaners through my pipes. A fresh pouch of Toasted Cavendish rests beside the steaming coffee mug at my elbow—my Saturday-morning coffee mug, the one with the Vargas girl in the red swimsuit.

An atmospheric inversion, or whatever, causes my pipe smoke to float in visibly layers a few feet below the ceiling. Wind blows outside. I hear oak branches scrape against the wall of the house. Our electric fire logs flicker.

For God only knows what reason, Ginny starts to clean out the hall closet by the bathroom. I hear her muttering to herself in the background, saying, “Why in the world are we keeping this”?

No answer needed.

A few minutes later I look over to see an alchemist at work. She’s intent on combining partially empty bottles of shampoo. I snap a photo with my new keychain camera:

I don’t disturb her.

I open Kierkegaard’s diary on my lap, but stare into space instead of reading..

This is the day which the Lord hath made…

Why can’t they all be like this?

Who Needs e-books?

This morning’s :London Daily Mail newspaper announced that the Portsmouth City Council now makes applications to get a taxi driver’s license available in a new mode—in Braille.

Seven Years Ago...

Although I’ve converted my files so my books are available in both print and e-book editions, I’m concerned about the dangers of e-books.

You see, yesterday I picked up four garbage cans full of fallen branches from our yard and afterwards I took a bath; and while laying in the bathtub reading a murder mystery, I fell asleep.

That got me thinking…

What I wonder is—if you fall asleep in the tub while reading an e-book, will you get electrocuted?

Steve Jobs did not address that possibility when he unveiled his new Ipad reader the other day; and the folks selling Kindles don’t talk about it either. Are they hiding something?

I prefer real books with ink and paper myself, but then, I’m old fashioned.

Besides picking up sticks yesterday, I also worked preparing more of my friend Barbara White’s old diaries for transcription. Her Along The Way series of books is also available at www.bluefishbooks.info. Last year she entrusted me with the 14 spiral-bound notebooks containing her prayer diaries and I’m transcribing and editing them for future publication.

I see one of my rolls as a writer is to preserve old diaries which might otherwise get lost and I’ve devoted a lot of energy to that end.

Here is a scanned page (click to enlarge) from Barbara’s entry for December 19, 2002:

That page caught my attention because it mentions Ginny and me. It got me wondering what my own diary for the same date might say.

So I dug back in the closet to pull down my own diary from seven years ago and here is what I found:

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

A few minutes ago, about 8:30 a.m., my brother David called on his cell phone saying he’s driving up to Shand’s Gainesville for his lung transplant as soon as he arrives. Months ago I agreed that if he survives the operation I will go to Gainesville, take the training and be his caregiver for a week or ten days.

So much for the Christmas plans Gin & I made last night.

We’ll see what happens.

Anytime the phone rings, Ginny and I both say, “Oh goody, there’s somebody with plans for our life”….

However, in spite of all my bitching, on some level I want to be 100% at the disposal of Jesus Christ. And if He has holiday plans for me different from my own, I don’t like it but I intend to follow Him to the best of my ability. I won’t win any points for being a cheerful giver, but I will try to fit into His plans. Damn it.

It would be nice if I could pray like Tomas A’Kempis in Of The Imitation Of Christ for real:

"O Lord, Thou knowest what is best for us, let this or that be done as Thou pleaseth. Give what Thou wilt, and how much Thou wilt, and when Thou wilt. Deal with me as Thou thinkest good, and as best pleaseth Thee, and is most for Thy honor. Set me where Thou wilt, and deal with me in all things just as Thou wilt. I am in Thy hand: turn me round, and turn me back again, as Thou shalt please. Behold, I am Thy servant, prepared for all things; for I desire not to live unto myself, but unto Thee; and O that I could do it worthily and perfectly!

Amen to that, Brother Tom.

Barbara White took me to lunch at Silver Star. She says she feels she has a discerning spirit which indicates that I am in danger of burn out or some kind of health problem. While we were there, Barbara felt that Peggy, the young waitress who has served us for years, was in pain; when she and Peggy talked, it turns out that Peggy has a large tumor which requires an operation scheduled for next month.

While I was out, a library in New England called Eve (our daughter who was home from college camped in our tv room during the holidays) for an hour-long job interview by phone. She feel good about it. She sounded so professional on the phone; I’m very proud of her.

Eve, Ginny and I went grocery shopping at Publix; while they were in the store, I sat out on a bench smoking my pipe. It was the most peaceful experience I’ve had in weeks..

When we got back, there was still no word from or about David. Not knowing whether or not I’ll be here for Christmas, I took a present over to Chris for the new child she and Rex are taking in.

Being mean and cruel I chased Eve out of her room so Ginny and I could watch West Wing tonight. I also asked her to make arrangements to stay with Jennifer this weekend if possible so Ginny and I could have some time together; recently I’ve wondered if our sex life is over altogether.

Thursday, December 19, 2002, Jennifer’s Birthday

Again today I went over my Will of God ms. (Yes, this is the same manuscript I’m still working on here in 2010, I’m a slow writer) It feels good to be nosing around serious work again.

Eve rode downtown with Ginny to go to the credit union so I had a few hours alone in the house.

At 6 a.m. this morning Barbara called Ginny. Yesterday, she, Barbara, felt a premonition of some sort that I am in some kind of undefined danger, physically, mentally, spiritually, or all three and she wanted to talk with Gin about it. I don’t know what to make of this. Gin doesn’t either.

Still no word about what happened or is happening with David. (He survived the transplant and in 2010 is still doing fine).

At her office Christmas party today Ginny won the prize for decorating the best office door. She used the text of the editorial Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Clause as a center piece then surrounded it with various pictures of Santa from all sorts of countries and cultures all over the world.

Here’s the selection I offered for her door:

Take Up Thy Mug And Walk!

Yesterday I finished correcting the 470 proof pages of A Dirty Old Man Goes To The Dogs. That book is now available in both print and e-book formats at www.bluefishbooks.info .

I also entered the book in the Google Books Program, but it will take about two weeks to show up there.

Working with the e-book formatting drives me nuts.

It involves an altogether new discipline and I feel I’ve been disciplined enough already in this life.

It’s that bottle in the smoke thing all over again. I don’t want to learn new computer stuff. I know more than I want to know already, but I’m forced to press on learning more and more to make my books manageable and marketable.

There’s a lot to be said for illiteracy.

In fact, last Saturday a man and his son, a boy of about ten, came into the restaurant where Ginny and I were enjoying smoked turkey BBQ. The little boy read the menu to his father because the man could not read.

I thought that both sad and touching.

Good for the kid.

Anyhow, I hope my books begin to sell better, because we face a financial reverse. About 15 years ago the finance department where Ginny works made a mistake. An audit last November finally notice the mistake.

They came up with a plan to correct their mistake.

All they have to do is reduce Ginny’s salary by 11.6 percent (8.6 percent beginning next month and an additional 3 percent later).

Problem solved.

Their callous letter outraged me.

It was their mistake. Nothing to do with us. But we have to pay for it.

I told Ginny to get in the car. I’d drive her to her office so she could pick up her house plants and coffee mug. I wanted her to walk out. To quit on the spot.

Her reasoning is that 88 percent of her income is better for us than zero percent.

Besides, she’s doing something vital toward feeding hungry children and does not want to abandon them.

She’s both Christian and fiscally responsible.

I’m the pissed out of shape hothead.

Adding to my boil is that this week a guy, a foreign national, came by four times to talk with me about how a local church is exploiting him and his family—if the situation is truly as he portrays it, it borders on slave labor.

I inquired about the legality of what they are doing and it appears legal—but it is as sleazy as Hell. God save us from churches skirting that line between legal and right.

Of course whenever I feel moral indignation, the Holy Spirit reminds me in a flash of the times when I have done the same thing—on a smaller scale, but the same thing—that I’m indignant about. In the present case, I’m remembering times when I exploited guys who worked for me.

When I think of bad guys, it’s easy to see that they is me—only younger.

Jesus said, judge not that ye be not judged.

But I’m not judging, I’m being discerning.

See, there I am again skirting between what is legal and what is righteous.

Good thing Jesus keeps His eye on me because I haven’t given Him much thought recently.

Anyhow, I hope my latest book/e-book sells well. I’m consulting Donald and Helen later this week about e-book contracts, additional formats, and such.

Oh, by the way, about the kid in the BBQ place. At the next table sat a man in a group of people, apparently hunters, judging from their camouflage gear and boots.

This one guy sported an interesting tee shirt.

On first glance I thought he was an environmentalist or something like that because the top line read: God Made A Place On This Earth For All His Creatures…

Below that were vivid wildlife photos of a jumping trout, a leaping deer, and a flying pheasant.

And the bottom line read: Right Beside The Potatoes And Gravy!

A Bottle In The Smoke

The image of a smoking caterpillar sprang into my mind.

Yes, John Tenniel’s 1865 illustration of the caterpillar puffing on a hookah in Alice In Wonderland imprinted itself on my brain. But alas, it was the wrong image.

This came up last night during our devotions. For years Ginny and I nurture the custom of reading a short Bible passage and praying briefly after dinner practically every night.

Last night as Ginny read a few verses from the longest chapter in the Bible, we encountered these words:

I know , O LORD, that Thy judgments are right, and that Thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me.

Let, I pray Thee, Thy merciful kindness be for my comfort, according to Thy word unto thy servant.

Let Thy tender mercies come unto me, that I may live: for Thy law is my delight….

My soul fainteth for thy salvation: but I hope in Thy word.

Mine eyes fail for Thy word, saying , When wilt Thou comfort me?

For I am become like a bottle in the smoke; yet do I not forget Thy statutes.

How many are the days of thy servant? when wilt Thou ….

Whoa!

Back up for a minute there.

“Don’t you mean smoke in a bottle?” I asked.

That’s when I thought of Alice’s caterpillar smoking fine tobacco in a Turkish water pipe—the smoker draws smoke through water in the bottle to cool it

I didn’t think they were blessed with pipe tobacco back in Old Testament days.

“No,” Ginny said, “It’s not ‘smoke in a bottle’; it says, ‘A bottle in the smoke’. What do you suppose that means? Did they even have glass bottles back then”?

Seeking answers to our questions, just for fun, we looked up the passage in a couple of different Bible translations:

One renders the Hebrew text as, “There's smoke in my eyes—they burn and water, but I keep a steady gaze on the instructions You post”.

Another says, “I am shriveled like a wineskin in the smoke, exhausted with waiting. But I cling to Your principles and obey them”.

Another says, “I have become like a wine-skin black with smoke; but I still keep the memory of Your rules”.

Another, “Although I have become like a shriveled and dried out wineskin, I have not forgotten Your laws”.

And another, “I am as useless as a discarded wineskin; yet I have not forgotten Your commands”.

Oh, that’s right. In the old days they kept wine in a cured leather sack. To drink, you hoisted the pliable bag up, rested it on your upraised elbow, squeezed the bag, and squirted the wine into your mouth without touching your lips to the spout—very macho.

As a curio, you can still buy wineskins. Try a college book store or one of those Pier One or World Import places.

Years ago, when I was teaching the Gospel of Luke to an adult Bible class, we had a Breakfast With Jesus lesson because so many of the things Jesus said and did happened at a meal. I asked everyone in the class to bring in some food mentioned in the Bible. They brought pieta bread, figs, apples, smoked fish, cheese, roast lamb—and one person brought in a wine skin and we took turns trying to drink from it without getting soaked.

Great fun.

This photo of an Italian statue of Polyphemus drinking from a wineskin looks just like me trying it. I mean the sculptor Antonio Novelli might well have used me for his model of the Cyclops.

Well, not exactly.

But you get the idea.

But, He-Man statue aside, why did the Psalmist say he feels like a wineskin in the smoke?

Jesus may have had this Old Testament Scripture in mind when He said, “No one puts new wine into old wineskins. The old skins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine must be stored in new wineskins. That way both the wine and the wineskins are preserved”.

When a wineskin bottle is fresh and pliable, it expands as the wine inside does. But if the skin is left hanging around, say on a tent pole, smoke from the hearth dries out the leather. It gets stiff. It cracks. It shrivels. It gets old. It can’t hold the new.

Oh, now I’m getting the picture. The Psalmist is saying he feels like a bottle in the smoke, dried up, past his sell-by date.

I can identify with that.

For instance, for the last few months I’ve encountered the problems associated with transforming my print books into e-books. I resist. I’m old fashioned enough to only think of books as real books and those others as air books… yet publishers everywhere confront the popularity of e-books with a new generation of readers. I’ve been working on new formats and considering the implications of free-range books and digital rights management.

New wine for my stiff old hide.

New technology. New ideas. New formats. New wine.

I face similar factors in my spiritual life. I’m comfortable with the way I am. I don’t want change. I want the familiar. I like the old hymns, the old methods, the old sermon modes—all this new stuff I see expanding in religious circles makes me feel as though I have gas.

Swollen up.

Ready to pop.

Seems to me like organized Christianity needs a good fart.

But that’s a different subject.

Saint Paul once said, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away ; behold , all things are become new. And all things are of God…”.

Yes, the Lord is always bringing new things into my life, new people, new ideas, new problems, new victories, new defeats, a new Heaven and a new earth. He stretches me beyond my present capacity.

But I resist.

Like the Psalmist I too feel like a bottle in the smoke. Dried up, set in my ways. Like the Cyclops I’m content to dwell in my safe little cave. Like Alice’s caterpillar, I all I want is to sit on my mushroom, smoke my pipe, and watch the world pass by.

I say, “Thanks very much, Lord, but that’s enough. You can stop now. I’m happy the way things are. I like me the way I am. Quit already!”

And He says, “Open your mouth wide and I will fill it”.

I suspect He knows what He’s doing.

The Psalm says, “My soul fainteth … Mine eyes fail … I am become like a bottle in the smoke”.

That’s my condition.

It also says, “Yet, I do not forget Thy Statutes”.

That’s my hope.

First Photos With My New Toy

Yesterday, Ginny bought me a new toy.

No special occasion, a just for the hell of it gift.

Now, I own a brand new Aries Mini Digital Camera, Model ATC-0103.

Hoot!

Of course, I snapped a photo of her across the table from me in a fast food restaurant as the first picture with my new camera:

Over our coffee we talked about how in the Bible God broke into peoples lives while the people engaged in ordinary, everyday activities—fishing, herding sheep, thrashing grain, filling out tax forms. The Lord of all creation is Lord of ordinary days.

My own ordinary activities recently involve correcting proof copy for my book A Dirty Old Man Goes To The Dogs. Two things impress me about this manuscript:

First, some sections are really good. That surprises me. Once I write a piece, I’m inclined to forget it and dismiss it as over and done with, so when I re-read it months later, it amazes me that I could have written so well. I mean this book is not terrible awful.

The other impressive thing is how many mistakes I make. I mean, I have gone over manuscript drafts before submitting it to the printer. Even so, I’m finding typos (our for out; and form for from are two I make all the time). I’m finding I misuse words that sound similar but have different meanings (such as fine and find). I’m finding inconsistencies in numbers. And I find that I should have stayed awake in seventh grade English grammar when they taught the use of commas…or should that word be comas?

Anyhow, such stuff occupies my ordinary activities over recent days.

Once we got home, I played with my new camera some. Here’s a photo of my pipes and ashtray:

The little camera works fine, but my shaking hands blur the picture. (An age-related nerve thing sometimes causes me to wobble a bit).

The camera’s best feature is that it has only two buttons: on/off and snap photo. That’s just my speed.

I mean we own this other digital camera that offers 837 features and settings. I think it has settings for taking pictures of flowers, one for pictures of mountains, one for portraits. I think there’s one setting for photographing male turtles and another for female turtles—it won’t work if you can’t tell the difference (fortunately, I can).This camera has a day/month and year timer and a setting for getting close-ups of coins. It will pop corn. It will calculate logarithms. I think there’s even a taser setting in case you want to take photos of unconscious people.

I can’t work that camera! I must have 600 photos of my own feet from when I lowered that camera before it finished focusing on the scene I was trying to photograph.

However, my new mini digital camera has advanced to the high point in technology that it only has two buttons and I can actually take pictures with it.

There is no flash attachment so the lens gathers available light—like so:

This morning, my friend Wes treated me to breakfast at one of the worst restaurants either of us has ever been in and I snapped this photo of him beside a waterfall/fountain in the dining room:

Again, it’s my shaking hands that cause the blurring.

One of the best things I like about my new toy is that this camera dangles from my keychain; yes it is that small. I can always have it handy in case I see something beautiful I want to capture. For instance, when we finally got out of that restaurant, across a parking lot, I saw this distinct weather front moving into Jacksonville:

It spanned from horizon to horizon—miles and miles of straight-line storm clouds, every inch with a bright silver lining in the morning sun.

Yes, I am ready to photograph anything I come across now.

That reminds me, Saturday while browsing over old diaries in a book store, I came across this anecdote about photography:

A reporter asked Marilyn Monroe, “Is it true that you posed for those pictures with nothing on at all”?

Marilyn replied, “Certainly that’s not true. The whole time I was posing I kept my radio on”.

Book Value

Over the weekend I overheard two conversations, entirely different on one level, about the same thing on another.

These struck me as important because I’m in the process of proofreading the manuscript of my book A Dirty Old Man Goes To The Dogs. In a few weeks that book should be ready of publication in both print and e-book formats. Therefore, Ginny and I recently engaged in long conversations ourselves about the value of my work. This is a long-standing topic for us.

I overheard the guy in the restaurant not because I was eavesdropping, but because he was talking to a man in a different booth. Why they didn’t sit together I don’t know. Because they were neglecting their wives during the meal to talk across space with one another, I suppose.

One couple already sat in a booth when Ginny and I got to the restaurant. A bit later this other couple arrived. I saw them pull in the parking lot in a tricked-out super-sized, duel-cab pickup, and I noticed the fine quality of the black and white plaid shirt the guy wore when he walked in the door.

This guy explained to his friend at an adjacent table that he bought houses which had been repossessed, patched them up, then rented them out. “The folks that had bought that place were paying over $200,000 for it; in the repo auction, I picked it up for only Forty-Three Five cash,” he boasted.

He laughed at the dilemma of the poor dumb saps losing their home.

He felt gleeful about it.

Their disaster equaled his opportunity.

Nothing immoral or illegal about buying low and selling high. But, somehow I felt the guy was greasy.

When the man at the other table questioned about problems with renters, the entrepreneur boasted about how easy it is to evict people who can’t meet their rent payments. You give them 30 day’s notice, then call in an eviction company. Yes there are companies whose only business is evicting renters. You pay the fee, they put the residents out on the street, change the locks, and hand you the new key. You don’t even have to be on the site at all.

The guy boasted that he’s bought at least one repossessed house a year since 1980 but that recently property values have dropped so much that he makes a killing every month or so now.

Why do I worry about the danger of Hell’s fire for such a man?

If he’s being at all unethical, he did not seem to have a clue about it. Just doing business. Making wise investments. Getting the most value for his money.

Why does my skin crawl hearing him talk?

I feel so sorry for him.

I wonder about his values.

Ginny said I should not be so judgmental; I said, “I’m not judgmental, I’m discerning”.

The other conversation, the one I overheard in the book store, also concerned value.

As I waited my turn in a long line at to get up to the cashier to pay for a history of Amelia Island, a second line of people waited in another line to exchange books for store credit. The two lines crossed.

Busy place that book store. (Although I saw no one buying one of my books).

I noticed a lady in the exchange line. Well-dressed. Heels. Expensive sweater. Look of old Ortega money. Frowning as though worried. Impatient about waiting in line with all these peasants who carried shopping bags or cardboard boxes overflowing with books to exchange.

She herself carried five small books wrapped in white tissue paper.

When she got to the counter I overheard her tell the evaluator about how valuable her books were. “All these are from the 1800s,” she said. “They’ve been in our family for years. I want to sell them now. They just take up space. How much are they worth?”.

The evaluator carefully unwrapped the leather-bound volumes. I could see they were in excellent condition but I could not make out the titles.

He checked for bookplates and autographs.

He consulted his computer.

He carefully re-wrapped the books in the tissue and handed them back to the woman.

“I’m not going to buy these,” he said. “They have no resale value”.

Boy, did she get hot!

She demanded to know why her books were not worth the hundreds or even thousands of dollars as she expected. “These are really old books,” she said. Her voice reeked of suspicion that he was pulling some sort of scam.

Everyone knows old books are worth a lot of money.

“Not these,” he explained. Patiently he told her about what makes a book valuable. Just being old hardly counts. Condition matters (and these were in fine condition). Provenance matters (but these were not autographed).

But the thing that matters most is that someone else will want to buy them.

“I can’t sell these, because no one is likely to want to buy them,” he said.

Again, I could not see the titles but I know the sort of book these were: maybe 1892 Real Estate Values In Collier County, Wisconsin. Or an 1832 edition of Elsie’s Prize Pig by Mrs. Judge Monroe Wombarton—old, but not valuable. They stayed in fine condition for 200 years because no body was interested enough to open the covers for two centuries.

The lady left the store fuming—but there was something else… I felt she was desperate. I felt she only ventured into the unfamiliar venue of a book store because she was short of cash and had heard somewhere that old books might be valuable.

I felt sorry for her.

The two conversations remind me of my own quest for values. I often question the value of my own work. What good is writing a book that hardly anybody reads?

But value resides in what someone is willing to give for a thing…

Or, does it?

Some things have enormous intrinsic value whether the anybody around recognizes it or not.

For instance, I once saw an antique show on tv when a man brought in an American Indian soapstone tobacco pipe which the evaluator said was worth something like $30,000! The guy said that at home he’d been using it as a tack hammer!

And as I recall, one morning in 1844 German scholar Constantine Tischendorf found a novice monk at St. Catherine’s Monastary, Sinai, starting a fire to cook breakfast with torn-out pages from an old book written in uncial Greek. Turned out that Tischendorf discovered the book to be Codex Sinaiticus, widely regarded as the most valuable book in the world!

But, until Tischendorf recognized the value, it had no value.

Fire starter.

Where does that thought take us?

Thinking about this stuff reminds me of what St. Peter said about the value of Jesus Christ He said that Christ is valuable—precious—to those who believe, but that those who do not believe count Christ as worthless, as of no more value than a broken brick laying squished in the mud at some construction site.

All the time I overhear or read words by people who do not seem to value Christ at all. He just does not enter into their value system.

That says nothing about Him; It speaks reams about them.

Treasure is treasure—even if you hammer tacks or boil your morning coffee with it.

If we do not recognize the value, who looses?

St. Peter says it better: “He that believeth on Him shall not be confounded . Unto you therefore which believe He is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence…”

I Forgot

I’ve admitted before that petty thieving is one of my besetting sins.

It’s a temptation that’s been with me for as long as I can remember. Nothing major. I don’t have the guts to be a bank robber, a stock trader, or a CEO, but I’ve been known to steal little things, things I can palm, or sneak away with.

There’s a reason I bring this up.

I’ll get to it later.

Friday I planned to have lunch with an old friend. We’d set this up before Christmas but postponed it till now because of the pressure of other holiday activities. I’d bought her a Christmas present which I intended to hand her after lunch, a lunch where we talked mostly about writing (She’s preparing an autobiography and wanted some tips about getting it published).

She is one of the three or four people who read my blog and she told me how she’d laughed about my story of my mysterious limp a couple of days ago.

That lead to our talking about memory and how I’m becoming more and more forgetful. I wonder if I’m developing what my grandmother used to call Galloping Senility, after all I am over 70 now, and the specter of Alzheimer’s takes on a haunting solidity at my age.

We ate lunch at a restaurant I’d never been to before, one way across town on the south side of the River, about 18 miles from my home. Our table overlooked a marina where millionaires tie up their yachts. It had been cool when I drove Ginny to work so I could have the car for the day and I wore my favorite jacket.

Let me tell you about my favorite jacket: when I was a little kid World War II was still going on and of course every movie featured heroic American airmen wearing leather flight jackets. We called them Bombardier Jackets. Brown leather. Pockets all over. Cool leather collar that you could snap a fur lining on. Zippers and snaps and epaulets on each shoulder where you could stick your flight gloves through when you weren’t wearing them.

The jacket that won the war.

John Wayne wore this kind of jacket.

I wanted one.

All the guys wanted one.

My parents could not afford to buy me one.

I spent my entire deprived childhood without a Bombardier’s Jacket. Even went off to college without ever owning one. Got married (twice) wearing something else.

Then, about five years ago at a garage sale, I spotted a Bombardier’s Jacket—slightly worn. Well, more than slightly. Torn in places. Shine rubbed off the leather. Holes in the pockets. Ripped lining and the fleece stuff inside comes out in puffs. Looked like the jacket had been worn by some guy on the ground during a bombing.

New, a World War II style airman’s jacket costs upwards of $400; My wonderful garage sale jacket cost me a quarter. Not a quarter of $400, but a quarter of a dollar. 25 cents.

My wife, who is not known for her fashion sense, says I was overcharged.

In the five or six years I have proudly worn My Jacket, it has not grown any less shabby. But if a Bombardier Jacket is good enough for John Wayne, it’s good enough for John Cowart.

So, my friend and I sit on this sunny deck, eating shrimp, sipping tea, watching yachts bob in the river, talking about writing, diaries, and life.

The glare off the water flashes in my eyes.

The sunlight in the open air warms me up. I take off My Jacket and place it in a nearby chair on the deck. It lays there in a wad looking like a rag without my robust manly body to fill it out.

As we discuss the autobiography, my friend observes that the people in our lives are like a tree: Some are leaves, they hang around for a while then blow away. Some are branches, more substantial than leaves, they seem solid for a season, then they break off leaving stumps. Then there are tree-trunk people rooted deep in the earth, permanent fixtures in your life, they are going to be there for you not to be shaken till the hurricane of death itself uproots them.

She said it’s important to recognize what kind of tree part the people around us represent. She said recently she valued someone as a trunk, but he turned out to be a leaf.

Now, when we went up on the deck, I’d left my pipe and tobacco pouch on the dash of the car. I was ready for a smoke. We went down to the parking lot and a truck had me blocked in so I had to maneuver around him, then I drove to drop her back at her house. Then I drove back to my house and about halfway home I realized that I had forgot to giver her that Christmas present.

Tough.

Before I got across the river, I had to turn on the car’s air conditioner. That’s Florida weather for you—19 degrees last Sunday, over 80 today.

Got home. Put the Christmas present on the table. Got undressed to shower and shave to meet Ginny. Reached for my matches. They are in My Jacket pocket…

My Jacket!

My Jacket is still 18 miles away across the river on the chair at that restaurant which is called ???

What was the name of that place?

I forgot.

About that time I realized that Ginny’s cell phone was in My Jacket’s pocket. I’d forgotten that. Now, I had panicked visions of somebody finding My Jacket, taking out the cell phone and placing call after call to Dakar. And we’d get the bill!

I just can’t remember the name of that restaurant!

Called my friend to ask her the name of where we’d just had lunch. She didn’t know either, just that nice new place on the river. She called somebody she knew and found out the name. She called the restaurant. The waitress said she’d found this rag—My Jacket. Since the place was closer to her house, my friend drove to pick it up and said she’d meet me on this side of the river in Orange Park where she had an afternoon appointment anyhow.

I quickly got dressed again and headed out to drive the ten miles to Orange Park. About half way there, I thought, “I’ll give her the Christmas present I forgot when we… O Crap. I’d forgot and left the present on the table at my house”.

She turned into the abandoned filling station off I-295 just ahead of me. So I met her car and retrieved My Jacket…

Ginny’s cell phone was still in the pocket.

Thanks be to God!

Drove back from Orange Park, past my house, and across the north side of town to pick Ginny up from work.

When we got home, the forgotten Christmas present still sat on the table… I’ll give it to my friend next year… Unless I forget again.

What does all this rambling about things I forgot to remember have to do with the life-long problem of stealing that I started out writing about?

Well, in my mind it relates to the single most important prayer in the Bible.

When Jesus was crucified, He was nailed up between two thieves?

The Gospels do not tell us the age of these thieves.

I think one of them could have been an old thief, a 70-year-old thief—a guy like me.

He’s the one who prayed, “Lord, remember me…”

Matteo Ricci’s World Map

Along with about 3,500 other people I used to work at the Library Of Congress, so whenever I hear news about the Library, my ears prick up.

Earlier this week the Library’s website (at http://www.loc.gov/index.html)announced their exhibit of a world map drawn in 1602 by Matteo Ricci a missionary to China. The James Ford Bell Trust paid one million dollars for the map. It is second most expensive map ever sold.

The Library also displays the most expensive, the ten-million dollar Waldseemüller Map of 1507, the first document to name America.

The Ricci Map is destined to become part of the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota.

Ricci, a Jesuit priest, drew the huge map— it measures 5.5 feet tall by 12.5 feet wide—at the command of Emperor Wanli. Understandably, it places China at the center of the world.

Printed on rice paper, the map was designed to be mounted in six sections on a folding screen.

The map includes drawings of the western hemisphere and Ricci’s notes about North America describe 'humped oxen' (bison), wild horses and a region named 'Ka-na-ta' (Canada).

Ricci also included a brief description of the discovery of the Americas:

“In olden days,” he wrote in his Chinese script , “Nobody had ever known that there were such places as North and South America or Magellanica (An old name for Australia and Antarctica) But a hundred years ago, Europeans came sailing in their ships to parts of the sea coast, and so discovered them”.

I found it particularly interesting that this 400-year-old map shows details of my home state; Ricci labeled Florida as “the Land of Flowers”. This ancient map shows recognizable details of the Florida landscape, including Apalachicola Bay, and the St. John’s River (although Ricci thought the headwaters lay to the north instead of to the south). He also identified the barrier islands along Florida’s east coast.

His map fascinates me.

There are about four other copies in existence.

Next time one comes up for sale and I have an extra million dollars in my pocket, I think I’ll buy one.

Remembering The Boat To Haiti

Honestly, I’d forgotten all about the boat to Haiti till yesterday when I heard the news about the terrible earthquake, magnitude 7, that devastated that country on Tuesday afternoon.

Carel Pedre, a TV and radio presenter in Port-au-Prince, told the BBC (at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8455735.stm )…"I saw a lot of people crying for help, a lot of buildings collapsed, a lot of car damage, a lot of people without help, people bleeding."

He said he had seen a cinema, a supermarket, a cybercafe and an apartment building, all of which had crumbled in the quake.

Mr Pedre said he could feel aftershocks every 15 to 20 minutes, lasting from three to five seconds each. The darkness, he said, was compounding the fear and worry people were feeling.

"There is no electricity, all the phone networks are down, so there's no way that people can get in touch with their family and friends," he said.

He said he had not seen any emergency services, adding that while people in the neighbourhood were trying to help each other, they did not know "where to go or where to start".

Reuters reporter Joseph Guyler Delva said when the quake hit the city "everything started shaking, people were screaming, houses started collapsing".

Mr Delva said he had seen dozens of casualties. "I saw people under the rubble, and people killed. People were screaming 'Jesus, Jesus' and running in all directions." He described the scene as one of total chaos.

"Amid the crying and wailing, people are spending the night outside," the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) chief in Haiti, Ricardo Conti, said in a statement at http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2436152

"People are trying to comfort each other. What you are hearing in the streets are the prayers of thanks of those who survived," he added.

"It is extremely difficult to move around the city to assess needs. What is certain is that the quake has had a massive impact on a population already reeling from other recent disasters".

The Wall Street Journal: (at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704362004575000460345415900.html ) reported the disaster:

"I saw dead bodies, people are screaming, they are on the street panicking, people are hurt," Raphaelle Chenet, the administrator of Mercy and Sharing, a charity that takes care of 109 orphans, said in a telephone interview from the capital. "There are a lot of wounded, broken heads, broken arms."

A hospital in Port-au-Prince collapsed, along with dozens of other buildings, including one building in the presidential compound and one other government ministry building, according to Alice Blanchet, a special adviser to the Haitian government. Other landmark buildings in the capital, including the U.N. headquarters and the Hotel Montana, sustained heavy damage, witnesses said.

These news reports triggered my memory.

My memory of the boat to Haiti is hazy and I may have details garbled because as best I can remember this happened back in the late 1970s or early 1980s when our children were small.

It started with our regular family devotions after dinner one night.

Ginny and I always looked for way to instill a sense of Christian charity in our kids. Often during our family devotions we’d read newsletters from missionaries in exciting places. Once the kids folded paper airplanes as a project letting them know about the work of Mission Aviation Fellowship. And once we sponsored an orphan in Indonesia and read her letters at our dinner table. (I can’t remember her name or what happened to her). Now and then, we took them down to a rescue mission and let them serve the homeless in a soup kitchen. Once in a great while we’d have a missionary or evangelist visit for dinner… stuff like that to capture the kids’ interest and imagination and give them some concept of outreach and charity.

Of course Bible readings and prayer formed the mainstay of our after dinner devotions. Yet, in keeping with our strict religious ideals Saturday night devotions meant watching the Muppet Show on tv. And we had Joke Nights and Ask Dad Anything nights which were always good for a laugh.

Then I’d also sometimes give object lessons illustrating Bible verses… Like the night when it was my turn to cook and I filled the cast-iron dutch oven with rocks, water, and a rubber snake; I sprinkled cinnamon over the mixture and set it on the stove to boil. Delicious aroma. Imagine their surprise when the lid came off releasing a cloud of steam!

I then expounded on Matthew 7: 7-11 where Jesus said:

“Ask , and it shall be given you; seek , and ye shall find ; knock , and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth ; and he that seeketh findeth ; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened . Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him”?

Then we all walked around the corner to Famous Amos for our meal… Our kids had an interesting childhood.

I’d forgotten all that stuff.

I’m now 70 years old and I forget a lot of things nowadays.

Writing it down makes it sound like more than it was. Really, we are just mediocre comfort-loving Christians trying to survive and make our way in the world. My religious living motto is:

Avoid pain.

Enjoy pleasure.

Maybe God won’t notice.

But as Ginny and I muddle through, Jesus Christ—His incarnation, death, resurrection, and continuing presence—does mean something to us and we tried to impart that to our kids as they grew up.

All that was so long ago I’d forgotten about it till I heard about the earthquake and I suddenly remembered that mission boat.

I forget how we heard about it—evening news maybe?—but we learned that a ship collecting foodstuffs and clothing for Haiti was docked in the St. Johns River behind Jacksonville’s (then) City Hall.

Seems to me that Haiti, the poorest country in the hemisphere, had just suffered a hurricane or something of the sort.

This looked like a good opportunity for a learning experience for our little kids.

During family devotions, Ginny told the kids about the situation and they gathered up black plastic leaf bags of clothes from their closets and she packed some canned goods and dried foods from our hurricane supplies, and we all drove downtown to the boat.

A shabby little thing, the ship hardly looked seaworthy. The captain, who appeared to be a godly and compassionate man, was from one of the Caribbean Islands himself. Nevertheless, he also appeared to me to be crazy as a loon. He felt the Holy Spirit had told him to take his little ship, load it with supplies, sail to Haiti, and help the poor.

Ok.

He let our kids roam his ship freely. They each carried a box or bag from our house and stow it in the ship’s hole in person. They explored lockers and swung from ropes and ran the bell and spun the wheel and spit over the side—a great adventure.

They all wanted to sail to Haiti with the old man.

Deadbeat Dad and Mom refused them passage.

Killjoys.

That may have been a good move on our part because a few days after the boat sailed from Jacksonville, it sank in the Atlantic. Coast Guard rescued the old man and his crew of two, but the boat and the donations for Haiti were lost at sea.

At the time, I remember feeling we’d been suckers. I begrudged the food and stuff we’d donated. I felt we’d wasted resources for a will ‘o wisp, half-baked religious fanatic.

Besides, we could have used those clothes and that food ourselves. We barely kept our own heads above water and had no business wasting stuff we needed.

That old guy could afford a boat, a ratty old boat it’s true, but more than I could afford. I have an aversion to giving money to people who earn more than I do. Still feel that way.

However, maybe our giving was not for the benefit of the people of Haiti but for the Cowart family. Giving may or may not help the poor, but it will surely help the giver. It may not change anything for them, but it does change us.

Funny thing, years later one of our daughters (was it Eve or Jennifer? Can’t remember) spent one summer on a mission trip helping an impoverished Indian tribe. And to this day both girls pack food baskets for the poor almost every holiday.

And years after that, our son Donald, organized a mission trip for his church and traveled to Haiti (or was it Cuba???) to build something or another for some poor church down there.

And there was the time Johnny brought Norman from under a bush to live with us for a week—the same Norman who said, “It feels good to be inside a building” and who would not walk in front of the tv because Dan Rather was watching him..

And my eldest son Fred, who is a gourmet cook, often prepares Sunday dinner for a group of guys who are not exactly homeless but appear to me to be disenfranchised loners. Fred was not in on the boat adventure,

And, of course, there was the time Patricia fed that poor homeless family with duck food and we all tease her about it unmercifully to this day. Or the time she fixed two of my pipes and my tobacco pouch to give to the craving homeless smoker she met outside her workplace.

Our children have all grown and established their own homes now. They have matured into different levels of understanding and faith from mine. Yet, again and again I have seen our grown kids put themselves out to spread God’s love by hands-on action in helping poor people.

I am so pleased with them.

So, the boat to Haiti sank.

Our meager attempt to send some cast-off clothes and a few cans of beans to Haiti never reached the island.

It never made any difference to them there.

But, it may have made some difference to us here.

You know, the problem with remembering this stuff from long long ago is that it reminds me of how little Christian service I do now.

Bummer.

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Oh, by the way, today is Johnny’s birthday; please stop by his new blog at http://godsinwaiting.blogspot.com/ and leave him a cheerful comment.

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One last thing: Yesterday, just for fun, my e-friend Sherri, whose Matter Of Fact blog is at http://matteroffactsite.blogspot.com/, asked readers to expose themselves by… Er, let me reword that… Sherri asked her readers to “unmask” themselves by posting an un-retouched, unflattering—but fully clothed—photograph of themselves.

I’ll play along. I just scanned in my most recent driver’s license photo. That shows the real me! Anybody got an air brush?

It Must Be Contagious.

New To The Blog World.

This morning I got word that my son Johnny, after his visit to Florida over the holidays, was bitten by a blog bug.

Yes, he has started his own blog called Things That John Thinks Of.

It is at http://godsinwaiting.blogspot.com/

He’s only made three post so far and it will be interesting to see where he goes from here.

Apparently he uses Facebook instead of Blogger as a host spot and when I tried to leave him an encouraging comment, it disappeared even though I told it I was using a Google account. However, Johnny is a computer geek so he can figure out how to work read the comments.

Please stop by his site and welcome him to the wonderful world of blogging.

Transcribing Barbara White’s Diaries

Two years ago, I published four of my friend Barbara White’s books, collections of her award-winning Along The Way newspaper columns. I feel her writings have the potential to become Christian spiritual classics.

My August 20, 2007 diary entry Shuffling Paper, tells the incredible saga, with photos, of how I managed the heroic feat of transforming her shopping bag full of columns into books.

Last year, Barbara entrusted me with her personal diaries to transcribe and publish. Again, she presented me with another bag full of material—this time it was dozens of hand-written, spiral-bound notebooks.

I try to transcribe these things now and then—a horrendous job for a guy who has trouble seeing and even more trouble typing.

I think she hates me.

Anyhow, beginning with her entries in 1976, finally I have now transcribed up to her first entry of 1987. Here’s a copy that entry:

Random Thoughts For 1987

This is a different year, this time I want to do things my way.

Whom God loves, He beats the Hell out of!

We get into trouble in the area of our greatest strength, our gift.

I need to give myself to service of the few rather than to try to be important to the many.

I need to go down and out with people, not sit up in my devotional tower.

I need to return to the basics—Who God is, what the Bible is, who Jesus is—foundational stuff.

I need to hold on before I can move on.

It’s better to be kind than to be right.

God deliberately left many things vague and mysterious. I can live with that.

When speaking at retreats, I need to impart a Spirit, not a set of rules.

Nobody remembers what I may teach or say, they remember what I do, they remember the Spirit in which I speak, condemnatory or forgiving, up or down. It’s not a matter of talk but of power.

Whether or not I can see where I’m going, the important thing is to keep going.

Those who strive to be great, will be last. God’s woman is not the person you’d expect. She is one of the little ones who kept the faith.

Nobody falls into sin. We jump!

Maturity admits that I am to blame. No one will take care of me. The world is not fair. I am to take responsibility. Admit I have done it to myself.

Restoration means, “Thy kingdom come”.

Barbara White’s Along The Way series of books is available at www.bluefishbooks.info .

A Good Day, A Bad Day, & A Day For Psalms

This morning, the prayers of King David in Psalm 3:7 and Psalm 58:6 stand as the uppermost Bible verses in my mind.

On the other hand, Saturday was one of my best days ever. Ginny and I slept late then spent over an hour leisurely discussing the merits of various places we might go for breakfast—the kind of lingering comfortable unhurried conversations that make the best moments of a long marriage.

We eventually picked a place where we found a corner table and sipped coffee and munched cinnamon toast till noon.

Then we began packing away Christmas decorations, pausing to reminisce about where we got this one or that one because we have accumulated such decorations for 40 years and they all have pleasant associations.

After a late lunch we watched a video—The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill And Came Down A Mountain. A fine film.

We separated to toy with various unhurried projects in deep but silent companionship.

I just can’t describe what a nice, nice day Saturday was.

Then Sunday it all went to Hell.

She woke grumpy in a deep mood swing.. I woke angry about a stupid dream that did not make the grade as a nightmare but was nonetheless upsetting. I tried to find a booth in a crowded restaurant for myself, an old man who looked like Ed Asner, and two or three kids. But every time I’d spot an empty table and push through the crowd, someone else would get to the table ahead of me. Frustrating!

All day long we snapped at eachother, got in eachother’s way, misunderstood what eachother said, put things in the worse possible light, and bumped heads.

Nothing had changed since Saturday, but everything was different.

Odd that.

In the afternoon we agreed to avoid making any of the decisions we’d planned to make. “This is just not a good day to decide anything,” she said.

We still love eachother but it was just a bad bad day for us.

After she left for work this morning, I pulled a tooth that has annoyed me since before Christmas. I did not want to fool with it before Patricia’s wedding for fear of messing myself up, so I put up with the pain and delayed pulling it till now.

But, this morning I had no reason to put the job off any more.

I pulled it myself for two reasons:

Ginny and I are concerned about medical expenses for the coming year and I did not want to waste our limited resources for such a thing this early in the year.

My other reason for doing it myself is my great aversion to being touched. I panic when a nurse wants to handle me for a complicated medical procedure like checking my blood pressure. And I’ve cut my own hair for years to avoid having a barber touch me, so why subject myself to a dentist’s touch when it’s possible to pull the tooth myself?

This makes sense to me.

But I don’t recommend pulling your own teeth to other people.

It does hurt a bit.

That reminds me of those two Psalms:

Psalm 3:7 -- Arise , O LORD; save me, O my God: for Thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone; Thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly.

Psalm 58:3-6-- The wicked …go astray as soon as they be born… Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD.

Scripture is so comforting in times of pain, isn’t it?

Faith Cures?

I had a pronounced limp this morning, and my post-Christmas depression continues as I work indexing last year’s diary.

How did I spend so much time accomplishing so little?

I suppose my three big things were publishing William Short’s 1854 Diary, registering my books in the Google Book Search Program, and formatting my books to make them available as e-books.

That’s all essentially clerical stuff.

Last year is gone and wasted.

However, help for both my case of the blues and for my limp is available.

As a Christian I believe in the power of prayer and the efficacy of the Holy Bible—but recently I haven’t felt much like praying or Bible reading.

What has given me a lift recently is reading a copy of Charlotte MacLeod’s book, Christmas Stalkings: Tales Of Yuletide Murder.

Yes, I get a lift from my after-Christmas malaise by reading about the lady who passed counterfeit bills at the holiday arts and crafts fair, or about the department store Santa who planted a bomb in the store, or about the guy who shot the angel in the school Christmas play, or about any of the other happy holiday tales of murder and mayhem in Ms MacLeod’s collection of short stories.

See, even as bleak, unbroken winter stretches before me, yet I retain some vestige of Christmas joy through reading this book (MacLeod, Charlotte. Christmas Stalkings. ©1991. Mysterious Press. N.Y. 264 pages).

Ginny provided me with another spirit-lifter in this bleak season when she checked out a video from the public library. Last night we watched the 1978 film classic, Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes.

No need to review this cinematic masterpiece: the title says it all.

As a Christian, I’ve discovered it wise to take whatever spiritual help I can get wherever I find it.

My limp proved to be of a different nature.

Earlier this morning when I woke up, I padded to the bathroom, out to the living room to turn on the computer, then into the kitchen to make coffee. I noticed that I had a pronounced limp.

No big surprise there because I have arthritis in my right hip joint that makes me limp on a bad day’s flare up… but my hip was not hurting???

I looked down and saw that I’ve been walking around the house wearing only one bedroom slipper.

I’ve walked all over the place this morning without realizing why I’ve been limping.

I went back in and put on the other slipper.

Now, thank God, my limp is cured.

Is there some deep spiritual lesson I should learn here?

Sometimes, nothing makes me feel more stupid than to discover the cure for what’s ailing me.

After-Christmas Let-Down

Joy To The World has come and gone.

I won’t hear that song again for months.

I am in my annual post-Christmas slump. I’m miserable and I deserve it. I’ve earned it. Back on November 3^rd, I put away the book manuscript I was working on and I haven’t touched it since. Now, I don’t want to.

November marked the beginning of my holiday season as Ginny and I celebrated our 41^st anniversary with a vacation trip. We returned to celebrate Thanksgiving. Then we celebrated three or four family birthdays in a row. Then we celebrated Christmas. Then we celebrated New Years. Then we celebrated our daughter’s wedding…

I never want to celebrate anything ever again!

I hereby declare myself celibate!

No. That’s not the right word—but it might as well be. All those celebrations leave no time for anything else.

Today is January 6^th—the day my grandparents called Old Christmas, the day liturgical churches observe as the time of the Magi’s arrival, the day some churches say is the actual birthday of Christ, the day when many churches hold Christmas pageants.

A day when I’m worn out and never want to celebrate anything ever again.

A day when I’ve been thinking a lot about decay.

Yes, decay.

The process whereby everything dwindles down, looses energy, falls apart, rots. Entrophies—is that a word? Let me look it up. Be right back…

No. That’s not the right word and I’m not sure what the right word is. The idea I want is that things degenerate from fresh and new to old and wrinkled as they move toward death. Like the sun loosing energy, light and heat fading, going black, dieing.

Or, more a case in point—like me.

Once young and strong and virile, now, I’m me. Weakening, souring, feeling old, useless, unwanted, decayed, degenerating, worn out, failing—and sorry for myself.

Poor John.

He’s human.

What brought on this happy train of thought? I mean more than just the post Christmas blues?

Well, two things:

The stairs on our vacation cabin back in November. And news that a neighborhood couple who’ve been married as long as we have are considering a divorce.

When we got to the cabin, I grabbed two suitcases and started up the stairs. Couldn’t make it. Had to rest on the landing. What happened? I’ve run up and down stairs all my life. Then it hit me—all my life is one hell of a long time!

I’m wearing out.

Then when we went swimming. I used to be a good swimmer. Won medals. Used to explore for underwater artifacts. Now, I can hardly dip my head under without loosing my breath. Come up sputtering, gasping for air.

What happened to me?

I ain’t the me I know.

This surprised me.

And I care less about things. (but that’s another thought train).

The fact is that things decay. People, buildings, relationships, love, interests, cars, me—we all wind down.

We are dieing.

This is really a morbid thought except for one thing.

Resurrection.

The Christian doctrine of resurrection confronts us with the fact that it’s Jesus or nothing. The physical universe appears to be headed toward a state of equilibrium—all temperature a uniform cold. All energy evenly dissipated. All life bland. Non-existence. A great gray nothing without form or feature.

St. Paul said, “If Christ be not raised , your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins…. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable”.

No fact of the Gospel is more important than resurrection.

Yes the Incarnation at Christmas looks more picturesque than an empty tomb.

Christ has come. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

The fact that Christ died for our sin and that He conquered death is the only hope anyone has—unless you regard oblivion as a hope.

But the Scripture teaches there is no oblivion—we will spend all eternity somewhere.

We were not made to die.

But to live.

As Paul said, “If Christ be not risen , then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain”.

He continues, “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept .

“For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.

“For as in Adam all die , even so in Christ shall all be made alive .

“But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at His coming. Then cometh the end…”.

So, I feel a trifle down in my post-Christmas slump.

The radio doesn’t play Joy To The World and Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer anymore. The decorations we haven’t put away yet are getting dusty. The big red candles have melted to look like lumpish slugs. I had to ask my son to change a light bulb for me because I was scared to wobble on the ladder. So I fell asleep in my chair before the ball dropped. So my arthritis annoys me. My sight fades. I feel old. Tired out. World-weary.

I think about decay.

Yet another thought creeps into my malaise—resurrection.

Yes, the night cometh—but joy cometh in the morning.

Johnny Returns North

Sunday, my son Johnny drove back to the bleak, frozen north.

Of course, he drove away from the bleak, frozen South—record-breaking cold hit Jacksonville Sunday night as temperatures dropped into the 20s and all the flowers in our yard wilted and died.

Johnny is my middle son, youngest of two sons from my first marriage.

Here’s a photo of him at the wedding in his Crocodile Dundee mode:

Johnny came down South to spend Christmas with the southern branch of the family and to celebrate Patricia’s wedding.

He added so much to the holiday as he spent time with Mark & Eve, Donald & Helen, and with me and Ginny. He did all sorts of helpful chores for me from moving heavy boxes to changing light bulbs high in the ceiling where I could not reach on the ladder (We’d been cooking in a dark kitchen for several days before he arrived).

Johnny has proved to be such a wise young man. He advised me about several areas of concern and his common sense and insights help me greatly.

He’s read about my friends Barbara and Wes but now he got to meet and spend time with them in person. Here’s a photo of Johnny with Jennifer, me, Wes and Ted at breakfast one morning:

One of the happiest things about Johnny is the fact that he works at a job doing computer stuff that he absolutely loves.

King Solomon said, “There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink , and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw , that it was from the hand of God”.

So, I am really happy that my son finds so much enjoyment in his work.

When he got back up in snow country, he sent me this e-mail:

“This was one of the very best Christmases I can recall in many years. As is normal I suppose, we seldom realize how profoundly we touch the lives of others. I've not smiled nor laughed so much in far too long just being with people I love and who love me. I'm back to work but will be trying to send things out as I get to them. Thank you all again for just being who you are. I love you”.

A Blurred Father’s View Of The Wedding

First internal stuff mostly about me…

I may get to the wedding in a bit

It’s now 5 a.m. and I’ve spent the past two hours trying to figure out what happened at the wedding yesterday; it’s all a blur.

To start with Ginny and I did not know Clint and Patricia’s wedding was actually on for January 1^st. We found out on the day after Christmas. There’d been some hitches and we did not know how those things were working out. Then Patricia wrote us an e-mail from downstate where she lives but instead of sending it to us, she’d punched the save draft key on her computer, so we remained in the dark.

Thus, many events caught us by surprise.

Besides, both Ginny and I are a bit hard of hearing so I kept missing names of people, directions, and pieces of vital information. So I’ve been off balance for days now.

However, thanks be to God, there was little we needed to know. Clint and his parents, David and Melonie, handled everything.

Meeting Clint’s parents scared me to death. They are very successful and wealthy people and I felt inferior and ashamed to meet them. David is an executive in the maritime industry and travels internationally managing ships; Melonie owns a shop of some sort. (I didn’t quite catch it).

I did not know we were to meet them till just hours before we did. So I felt nervous. But they acted so gracious and happy and made us feel welcome.

My son Johnny paid for our dinner at that meeting at a restaurant usually too expensive for Ginny and me to frequent. Johnny and David got to be thick as thieves talking about shipboard computer systems.

That was on New Year’s Eve—cold, wet, rainy.

Clint and Patricia had chosen to marry in an outdoor ceremony beneath the branches of Jacksonville’s Treaty Oak.

Wide-spread canopy of branches, lovely flourishes of Resurrection Fern, 25-foot diameter trunk, grassy field, wooden deck—and 800,000, 000 acorns!

Patricia asked me to go early with a broom and sweep the acorns and leaves off the deck. Dad on the go. Up at dawn. Loaded leaf blower in the car. Put on rain gear because it was pouring. Drove to the oak. Located a fuse box and threw the switch. Plugged in my leaf blower and cleared the deck of leaves, sticks, acorns and a used rubber.

Returned the electric switches back exactly as I’d found them. Drove back home soaked to dry off, warm up, and dress.

Hummm—the pants to my suit fit the last time I wore it three years ago.

Must have shrunk.

Try these tan pants instead.

Ginny drove us back to the oak an hour ahead of time. For some reason it was important to the wedding couple to be married at 1 p.m. on 1/1/10. Mystical numerology, I suppose.

Although the rain continued to drizzle, the wind blow and the temperature drop, I managed to work up a sweat carrying chairs from the parking area to the deck.

Tragedy!

My pipe tobacco got damp—could hardly get it lit.

Johnny and the preacher (J.P.? Notary?) were there already. But the first person I met was a lovely young woman who hugged me. Who was this girl?

It was Rachael, whom I’ve known since childhood, but she’s matured so much I did not recognize her. She brought her cello to play for the wedding. She and Johnny rigged a canopy so her cello would stay dry. Among other pieces, Rachael played a hauntingly beautiful rendering of Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring.

More and more people arrived—about 40—but when I tried to seat three more young people with camera’s, it turned out they were tourists in town for the football game and had nothing to do with the wedding.

Finally, the bride, my youngest daughter Patricia, arrived for me to escort down the aisle. As we strolled across the field, I told the nervous child bits of history about the oak.

There were some girls loitering on the steps.

I tried to shew them away, till Patricia informed me they were bridesmaids—I did not know there were to be any bridesmaids.

The preacher asked, “Who presents this woman for marriage”?

I replied, “Her mother, her sisters, her brothers, and I do”.

I retreated to the rear to try to fire up a smoke from my damp tobacco pouch.

Didn’t smoke. Smoldered.

I cried.

Not because of damp tobacco.

Such a terrific young couple:

Scads of people, both families and friends, photographed the ceremony. Ginny took this one from the middle of the group, there were more camera people behind her.

Unfortunately, because our camera batteries died, or because of condensation, or whatever, only about a third of the pictures Ginny took came out; Dozens of people say they will e-mail their copies to us.

Another high-tech thing that amazed me came to light when everyone began talking about going to the restaurant Clint’s parents had booked for the reception. The Hilltop Club is about 15 miles away in Orange Park—only two people in the crowd had ever been there before—so all these high-tech folks whip out GPS locating devices, synchronized coordinates, climbed in their cars and sped away.

I had directions written down on a post-it note.

The Hilltop hardly compares with Dave’s Diner, but it is quite nice:

A 20- foot Christmas tree adorned the lobby. Thousands of lights and scads of poinsettias decorated the porches. Golden koi surfaced near the fountain in the pool…But I asked Ginny to photograph one festive decoration especially for me:

Clint and Patricia’s reception was held in one of the front formal dining rooms, the sort of place you'd expect to run into James Bond:

At Patricia’s request, her sister Eve baked a cat-cake for the occasion:

Mark and Eve, bless them, also paid for succulent prime-rib dinners for Ginny and me.

Cline and Patricia had asked that I give a toast or blessing for the dinner—“Because that sort of things comes so easy for you”—Ha! I worried over this task for days rejecting a dozen ideas till I came up with three short readings from my tattered old Bible:

Here’s what I said:

The kids asked me to open this with a toast or something. I looked up wedding toasts on the internet and they are too obscene for your innocent ears. So I’m going to read three short passages from the Bible: a commandment for Clint, a bit of love poetry for Patricia, and a blessing for us all.

Cline, this is the commandment of the Lord God Almighty!

Rejoice with the wife of thy youth.

Let her be unto thee as a gazelle upon the mountain,

Or a deer in the meadow.

Let her breasts satisfy thee at all times.

Yea, Be thou ravished with her love!

(At first the audience seem stunned, then they began to hoot and laugh and clap Clint on the back).

What, I said. Did you think there were only ten commandments in the Scripture?

Patricia, this love poem by Agar the Seer is for you:

There are three things too wonderful for me to tell about.

Yea, there are four too beautiful for me to describe:

The way an eagle soars in the air,

The way a serpent moves on the rock,

The way of a ship in the midst of the sea,

And the way a man makes love to a maid.

And, now a blessing for us all, the words Aaron, High-Priest of Israel, brother of Moses, pronounced over God’s people:

The Lord bless thee,

And keep thee.

The Lord make His face to shine upon thee,

And be gracious unto thee.

The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee,

And give thee… Peace.

Here’s a photo of Ginny and me enjoying a touching speech Clint made about how he met our daughter:

Later, Patricia came over to our table and I took her on my lap and did that little nursery rhyme motion game, “This is the way a lady rides”—she laughed and giggled just like she used to do when she was two years old.

During one smoke break, I enjoyed a conversation with one of Clint’s aunts who told me about some 1849 diaries in her family kept by pioneer ancestors who migrated west during the Gold Rush. Fascinating.

I am leaving out so much.

I met so many nice people. I heard so many nice things. I learned of so many plans—many of Clint’s relatives are driving downstate for another reception with a hundred or so young people in attendance on Saturday. Ginny and I just could not face that extra trip.

When we got home, she sat reading a murder mystery to unwind. I watched a vcr movie about a prehistoric monster that ate a boatload of people who richly deserved eating—very relaxing.

All day long I’ve been damp and wet and cold. All day long people have hugged or touched me not knowing that almost anytime I’m touched I have panic attacks so bad my breathing stops. All day long I’ve had the neurological shakes that make me tremble so bad I have to hold the cup with both hands to drink coffee. All day long people have swarmed around me. All day long the tooth that needs pulling next week has pained me. My feet hurt. I have a cold that racks me with coughing. All day long I’ve felt inferior and out of place. All day long it has drizzled cold rain. All day long, I’ve had trouble lighting my pipe.

One moment at Hilltop Clint caught up with me on a veranda overlooking the pool. “Mr. Cowart,” he said, “Today has been just perfect. Absolutely perfect”.

I agree with him.

Patricia's Wedding

Today our youngest daughter got married at Jacksonville’s Treaty Oak.

The father of the bride survived—but is too tired to write about it.

Maybe tomorrow…

ZZZZZ….