A simple pleasure, recaptured

Yesterday morning, I spent most of the morning at the Georgia Bone & Joint offices in Newnan. I was there to see the orthopeadic surgeon to determine whether he would cut the cast off my arm and leave it off. As it turned out, he decided it was time to free my left arm from its bondage, so I drove back to Griffin, sans cast, and have spent the subsequent hours trying to get used to life without the big blue cast on my left arm.

As it turns out, the arm hurts more without the cast than with it. I may be wearing the splint I purchased at the beginning of this travail, just to give me some support and comfort. However, I am happy to get the opportunity, probably this weekend, to swim in a swimming pool and enjoy the only part of summer left untested. This morning, I was able to floss my teeth, shower without a plastic bag over my left arm, and feel confident that I was able to bathe and soap every part of my body.

One part still unresolved: wearing a wristwatch with a metal band is still difficult. I think I will wear a leather band for awhile.

Tonight, I drive to Ellerslie and back for a closing. I am back to being an accepted vendor for one of the title companies. Yay!

The Last Fall of College

When I was a Senior in college, during my last season of football, I would walk over to the gymnasium on late Sunday afternoons and sit in a hot whirlpool tub in my gym shorts for about an hour until my right knee felt loose. Usually, my buddy, Don Crossley would be in one of the other whirlpools. On the following Monday afternoon I would walk over to the lockerroom at Wilson Field, the old football stadium, after class, and paint my knee with atomic balm, a really hot, viscuous liquid liniment. It was dark orange-red and fragrant. When I pulled my knee brace over the knee, I would feel a comfortable heat on my knee which would last throughout the week. As we went through drills in preparation for the week's game, my knee would swell and feel more stable from the fluid.

After the game on Saturday afternoon, I would be bruised and swollen all over. After spending an afternoon of watching pro football on tv, trying to avoid having to watch the Redskins, who we all hated in my dorm apartment, Don and I would walk back to the trainer's room in the gym and start the process all over again.

My parents came to every game that year, as they had during my junior year. They got to travel to a lot of places, big and small: Sewanee, Tennessee; Danville, Kentucky; Georgetown, D.C.; Davidson, North Carolina; Emory, Virginia; Maryville, Tennessee. A few others I don't remember. Nice weekend trips in the Fall of the year; I hope they enjoyed the trips. It was an odd season. We had knew coaches. We worked harder. We felt like we were making progress, even if we were still losing most of our games. I still liked it. I look back on it fondly. My friends, coaches, trainers, professors and such. An Autumn thirty seven years ago. Man, I am old.

There is a Circle in Tennessee

There is a circle of trees in Tennessee
Of antique oaks and sugar maples
Where the furrowed fields roll round about them
And the sun and moon do pace their measure
And the circle is perfect
And the circle is true
As a golden wedding band
When first placed on its finger
Once we saints sat in lawn chairs
And recited ancient stories
That passed us from heat of day
To the cool of evensong
Beneath the perches of the quail
As they conversed among the branches
And all my family were there
Grandfather, uncle, greataunt and father
Preserved in their places
And I was swinging from a tire
Suspended from the obliging arm
Caught up in the eternal oak
All in a circle
All as one
All together
Forever caught in the honey amber
Stitched in the tapestry of the circle of trees.

To the Session of First Presbyterian Church of Griffin

Tonight as I lay in my bed before turning out the lights for sleep, I finished a book over which I have been laboring for a number of weeks. The book is a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German pastor who was executed in the last days of World War II. After the war in Europe was over and it became clear to his family and friends that he had not survived his imprisonment by the Nazis, an English clergyman and friend held a memorial service in London for him and all those who had died in Europe opposing Hitler and the Nazis. In the book I was reading, the author quoted the memorial sermon of the pastor, which was based on a quote from 2 Chronicles
20:12, "Neither know we what to do, but our eyes are upon Thee." At the end of the sermon, the pastor referenced the familiar lines from the Apostles' Creed as follows:

Yet our eyes are upon Thee. We believe in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting....."

As I read these words, it occurred to me that God was sending a message through this sermon delivered sixty six years ago. The phrase 'communion of the saints' lept out to me from the page. In these times of strife and economic hardship, we are particularly called to the communion of saints. I am no theologian or Bible student. I do understand that the communion of saints refers more to our ultimate reunion with those who went before, but tonight I read that phrase in a broader mode as I considered how I fit into the communion of saints in Heaven as well as on earth today.

Two years ago this past July, my father passed away in Dunwoody. As we prepared for the memorial service at Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church in Sandy Springs, I was thinking more of my family traveling up from Florida and down from Tennessee and the members of the church and community who were friends with my parents or knew me from my time as a boy growing up in Dunwoody and in Sunday School. As the afternoon of the memorial service arrived, I was gratefully surprised to see members of our church family in Griffin coming up the walk to the narthex of the church, sitting in the pews I grew up in and sharing words of comfort and consolation with me at the reception.

I perhaps felt no greater connection to this communion of saints since Kate was baptized and later confirmed. I will always be grateful to those couples who came up from Griffin to support me and the rest of my family. It was a moment of touching communion with my brothers and sisters and an outpouring of their love.
When I think of 'the communion of saints' it is hard to break free of my memory of that afternoon gathering in Sandy Springs.

But now I fear we as a congregation are suffering from a weakness in the communion of the saints. For some time now, we have suffered from a feeling of the loss of connection with our friends here. The first time occurred when Cindy developed pneumonia and was missing from church for several months. No one called. No one asked me where she was when I was in church. People who we had been very close with throughout the years were absent.

Today, so many of my friends are now going to other churches. I don't see any great effort to reach out to them. There seems to be a lack of effort to preserve our sense of communion. I confess that I, like many of us, share responsibility for this break in the fabric of our communion. We all must consider how we can reach out to others in our community. I think if we are to preserve the mission of this church, we must pray and work to strengthen the communion of the saints. I understand that there are many reasons why people leave the church. I understand that Americans are culturally individualistic by nature.

But when we speak the creed, we state that we believe in the communion of the saints. The passage from 2 Chronicles instructs us to look to Jesus. In one of his parables, Jesus told his disciples that the shepherd would leave his flock to ensure the safety of the lost lamb. Are we not called to search for the lost lambs of our congregation? This church has been a shining light in this community and the world. God calls us to see after the lost lambs wherever they might be. We must make an effort to preserve the communion of the saints as we acknowledge in our creed. Amen

Word from the front

One more week and maybe I get this damned cast off my left arm. The pain and weakness is gone from my left ankle; I know not how. At least I could get free of these impediments and do something other than sitting on the couch, watching television. I have made it clear that when this blue cast comes off, I get a grilled hot dog, a cold beer and a swim in a pool. I hope this happens before the end of summer. Football season has already started. It's getting on there. I haven't been writing regularly. Using this I-phone is difficult. Convenient, but more difficult.