Hugs

The sun rises and my mind moves the flesh
Toward the arriving daylight,
And so much of my behavior is habit,
A set of unwritten rules burned in my cortex
Which sets the clock ticking ponderously.
Until something new arrives on the wind:
A brief whiff of a flower's scent under my nose
The tremulous song of a garden bird
Singing his greeting to the new day
Or the golden glow of the morning sunshine
And suddenly the presence of the almighty
Falls before my mind's eye
And I am aware that I am not walking through this garden alone
And that even some piece of insignificant dust
Such as myself, is precious in his eyes,
So that the ultimate father
Might drop his briefcase
At the end of day
With the dying light of afternoon
Filtering through the blinds,
And offer his strong arms
To my infirm limbs
And allow significance to fall down upon me in a parental hug.

Pentecost Sunday

This morning Kate and I went to church and as we walked across the parking lot we saw a group of young people in green t-shirts, two of which were carrying acoustic guitars.

Kate immediately, said, "Oh great, a praise band. I hate praise bands."

As we entered the narthex, Kate said, "Well, I guess we won't have to sing in the choir."

But I led her down to the choir room and opened the door, and there were three members of the choir and the pianist getting ready for the service.

I turned to Kate and said, "Nope, we've got choir."

So we walked into the choir room and headed back behind the organ to the robing room. We dressed in our robes, grabbed our music books and returned to the choir room. After practicing the anthem, Reverend Dalstrom entered and prayed for our performance and then we entered the sanctuary.

Today was Pentecost Sunday. We were wearing our red stoles and Reverend Dalstrom had his red stole with the modern depictions of the descending dove of the Holy Spirit. He was proud. He only gets to wear it once a year.

The service began and we installed the camp workers at Camp Calvin and then the service began in earnest and we listened to the sermon about Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit, then we finished up with communion.

And as we sat in the quiet of the sanctuary and Tim blessed the elements and the body of Christ and the blood of Christ was served by the elders to the congregation and the guests assembled, it occurred to me the struggles of the different people I had dealt with this past week.

I thought about Rev. Tom Baynham up in Richmond, struggling with a crisis of conscience, and the question of whether he should continue to be a minister of the word. I thought about some of my friends who are struggling with the economics of their lives in these difficult times. I thought about all the trials and tribulations we all seem to struggle with these days.

And I prayed that the Holy Spirit would visit us all. I prayed that we could find consolation and solace in our lives from our troubles. Not as a crutch, but as a signal that the Father God who created this world and continues to sustain our lives and the life around us is still there, concerned with our miniscule lives. From the greatest details to the tiniest. I prayed that we would know the presence of God in our lives.

And we would know God.

We sang, "Crown Him with many crowns." As the stanzas passed, my voice became clearer and stronger. Faith became confidence in my heart.

Doubt will return, but for now, I feel closer to real faith.

A small gathering of friends

If I were to gather all of my close friends from high school, the ones I used to hang around every day, what would it be like? Would we pick up where we left off? Or with the run of our lives, separate and apart, without the further melding of experiences and joys and sorrows, would we be free to pick up where we left off and reclaim what we once had?

In some sense, the continuation of our experiences, separate from what we had together, might not make much difference. Yesterday, a group of my former classmates at Dunwoody High got together at a restaurant in Dunwoody. It was somewhat of an odd mix, since most of us weren't real close while in school. But we ultimately had more in common than differences. And it was very easy to slip into a comfortable ease of communication and affection with these folks who together shared the halls and classrooms of Dunwoody High School.

They are all nice folks and we touched our lives together like the clinking of glasses and joined again in a sweet reunion. We have beautiful, intelligent children, those of us who have children, and our spouses, those of us who have spouses, are fun and interesting. We have suffered some downturns. Specifically, in these days when our economy struggles and spits along in spurts and gasps. Our lives seem overall to be fruitful and fun. It was a lot of fun to be with them for a short visit. I hope we can get more of us together for the next meeting.

We are getting older together. We are preparing our children for their lives together. We have more in common than we understand. We should strive to struggle together as well, with an empathy born in common origins and continuing experiences. I look forward to the next time.

The fruit of our labours

After living through the deep grey and blue of late Spring showers for several days, we arrived at the office under baby blue. The sun gave us warmth but nothing too terrible. Several clients did not show, which was a problem, but the Friday office was quiet and comfortable and I was able to leave in time to come home to gather the ladies and go to supper. We ate Japanese tonight and I am apparently suffering a bit for that. Afterward, we went to a movie at the local theater, which I appreciate. The movie was a comedy and we all enjoyed it. Afterward, we came back home and watched "Moulin Rouge", a movie which today sounds like a musical, but instead was movie from back in 1952 with Jose Ferrer playing Henri Toulouse-Latrec, struggling with the problems that life had dealt him to become a famous artist. I hadn't seen it in a long time, and I have to confess that I fell asleep somewhere in the middle, so I will have to see if I can crank it up again and try to watch the whole thing. Tomorrow, we drive to Dunwoody for our little miniature reunion. Some familiar faces. Some not so familiar. But all sharing a beginning at Dunwoody High School (at least for those of us who are not simply spouses). Over the last few weeks, it has been nice to reaquaint ourselves with each other and find new friends among the old, particularly with those we didn't really know in high school. It is a shame we cannot all be there, but we are spread over this globe and probably fortunate to get those of us who will be there tomorrow. We are all old together. None of us is the young man or woman we were in high school. And that is good. We all must progress. We all have suffered. We all have felt the sweetness that life can give. Life crushed in our hands, the juice like a handful of ripe berries, running through our fingers. Making a mess, but one sweet mess. Perhaps we can share a bit of the sweetness and the sadness.

Appalachian ramble

This is an old world
The geologists will tell you
But you need not consult science
Just take a walk in the woods
In the shadow of the Appalachians
Late in November
When the russet and orange leaves
Cover the forest floor
Like God's tapestry
And your feet scuff across the detrius
Of the year, fallen and dying there
Without a glimpse in your mind
Of the coming of life in Spring
When the trees and bushes
Begin to squeeze the remainder of life
As buds on their surface
And the new green pushes through the seams
Until the daffodils replicate the royal gifts of Bethlehem
And redeem the dead grey of Winter,

But walk through the dying world of November
And hear the silence of sorrow
And the coming of the end of all
And remember the true gift of slumber
Covered over with the thick comforter of Winter
The stars above providing the sole reminder
Of God's immensity in this old, old world.

Truncated Pub Crawl

On Saturday night, Bill and Cicely and Beth and Jeff and Cindy and Kate and I drove down from Seminole along Gulf Boulevard until we got to Sunset Beach, to a bar and restaurant on the beach called "Caddies". The place was wide open, with a dude playing guitar and covering as many Classic Rock Hits as he could before the place closed down. Most of the inhabitants were late teens and twenties, with a few thirtys, fortys and fifties sprinkled in amongst the wild and crazies. It looked like Spring Break or a replay of one of those Frankie and Annette Beach movies from the early Sixties. The only real difference was the number of tatoos on the denizens as compared to the 60's and the vintage of the music. Indoors, the television sets were set to the Tampa Bay Rays and waitresses flitted amongst the crowd, trying to keep their orders in line and not lose a tray of drinks to the weaving customers.

I couldn't help but ogle a few of the ladies in their relative states of disarray, as I dodged the people trying to make it back to and from the bar to reload. Well, actually, quite a lot of the ladies. It didn't take me long to realize that I was probably old enough to be most of their fathers. And my wife and daughter were nearby, which was good, I suppose.

There were quite a few young girls who looked like they were trying to hold their first good drunk, while allowing their boyfriends carte blanche with their lips. At one point, Cindy entered the furnace which was the area where the restrooms were located, and listened as two young girls shared a stall and one girl tried to commiserate with the other because she had been carded and unable to purchase another beer for her lack of falsified identification. The other girl assured her that they would find another fake id. Such drama laying itself out in the crowded ladie's powder room.

Meanwhile, the bikers and the cowboys were running hither and yon among the crowd, chasing after their girlfriends or just available girls. Next to our table was a group of Eastern Carolina students, comprised of six guys and one very drunk coed. I know they were Eastern Carolina students because several of them had ECU hats on their heads. They all seemed to be having a good time, even the coed, as they took turns trying to dance with their one female partner. They did not succeed very well.

At other tables were groups of families, with everything from grandmothers to little boys running from beach to table and little girls doing cartwheels on the sand. The adults were more tied to the tables, as we were, drinking and conversing in the growing darkness.

Later on in the evening, the place cleared a bit and most of the younger drinkers moved on to other bars. Even we moved down the beach to Woodies, which turned out to be an even older crowd. They might have been our age, but we assigned them an age which was older than us. The bar was running a special on draft beer which appealed to me, until I took a sip of my beer and it tasted skunky. After getting our waiter to replace my beer, and finding the second one skunky as well, I finished up the night by scarfing down about half of a bowl of french fries that Cindy had ordered.

The evening ended with fireworks from Treasure Island, to the north, and we stood and watched the powder go off in the Spring night. It was a return to earlier days for us and a nice night to share with family and friends.

Home from the Gulf

We made it across the fields of South Georgia and the rains of Central Florida, near Ocala, and the skies were partly cloudy in Seminole, when we arrived and found Cicely at home, on call, and hoping for some peace for a change. Bill arrived later, and we drove over to Clearwater and found a table beside the sand, where we could eat seafood sandwiches and drink a cold beer and enjoy the salt air and feel the sand at my feet. It was delightful.

On Saturday, we expected rain and found some along the archipelago, until we made our way past the Don Cesar and parked the car at the beach and placed a couple dollars worth of coinage in the parking meter and walked down the beach in the now bright sunshine.
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Clearly that day was to be our day to go to the beach, so we found a spot to eat lunch, sat under the whirr of the ceiling fans and ate lunch while the sun glinted on the water behind the restaurant. Once again, a delightful meal on the water, enjoying the setting and the food and the company. Glad that I am married to Cindy and the times when we could share these bits of living. Later, we walked across the street and went into a grocery store and bought smoked fish dip and crab dip and crackers, then headed back to Seminole to change into our bathing suits and return to the beach, this time at Redington Shores.

It was fun to swim in the salt water. To get our hair wet and enjoy the water and the air and the blue skies. It was delightful. That afternoon, we returned to Seminole and enjoyed a meal with Bill and Cicely and Ed and Val and Aunt Meg and Uncle David and Beth and her roommate, Jeff. We sat out on the patio and enjoyed each other's company.

On Sunday, we went back to the beach, after visiting the Clearwater Marine Rehab Facility and Aquarium. At the end of the day, we headed over to Ed and Val's and ate supper and listened tol live music played by a small band on their dock. It was fun. A lot of fun. The temperature was in the low 70s and the skies were clear. Later, we cold see lightening on the northeastern horizon.

Today, we left early, packing our dirty clothing in the car, stopping to shop at Macy's in Tampa. Later, I found my way to Ybor City and we were finally able to eat lunch at the Columbian Restaurant. Cindy, Kate and I thoroughly enjoyed the ambiance, one years in the making, with the colonial spanish feel, the tiled pictures of Columbus landing in the New World. I ate ropa viella and Cindy and Kate ate gazpacho and shrimp and crab croquettes. The Cuban bread and the key lime pie. The amiability of the Cuban waiter, Raul. It was fun.

Unfortunately, we had to get back on the highway and head north to Georgia. Now we will sleep in our own beads, the air outside cooled by the rain now falling in Griffin.

Good to be home. Good to visit family. Good to enjoy the bounty of Florida, the beach and the sea.