Memorial Day, An Intersection of Emotions...

   I have always liked the word "juxtaposition", or maybe I just enjoyed the sound of it. It sounded like a word that an intellectual would use. Not that I am one, of course, just pretending to be one.

   When it comes to the celebration of the American Memorial Day, I see it as, in many cases, the intersection of Pride and Sadness. These two emotions meet at the headstone of the fallen warrior.

   Yesterday I thought back over the times I have visited places where monuments or tombstones provided this backdrop.

   There are large, manicured spaces where the headstones are aligned and uniform:

   Such as the National Cemetery in Chattanooga

   Or the one we found on a trip accidentally one day in Indiantown Gap, PA

   Or the one that is a part of the Andersonville, GA Civil War site

   Or in Union Springs, AL

   There are also cemeteries that are distinctly personal and maybe not so "pretty":

   Sometimes these men and women lie in small cemeteries like the one down in Camden County at the site of the abandoned Oak Grove Baptist Church.

   One of the graves there at Oak Grove

   A marker at a cemetery outside Folkston, GA, non-readable but with a flag

   Or one at Ludowici, GA up in Long County

   Or one at Schlatterville, GA, over in Brantley County, near Hoboken

   Sometimes a number of names were together as those who died in a war, like these monuments in Litchfield, CT.

   I confess that I have never heard a shot fired in anger. My only military service was in the Army Reserve from 1955 through 1962. I never served on active duty in time of war.

   I have no parents or grandparents who have served in time of war, or children or grandchildren either, so I can't feel the personal pride or sadness as I stand in any of these places. National pride, of course, but it cannot be the same.

   I have seen men standing or kneeling at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC with hands tracing a name, or mothers with small children at a headstone in a National Cemetery, but I can't know that feeling personally. Even now as I write, I feel the tears welling up in my eyes, but I can't know the heartache of loss they experience.

   They stand with juxtaposition of feelings, while I stand at the intersection of those emotions and silently give thanks

   I am grateful for all the sacrifices made throughout our history, by men and women, by  their families and loved ones, and I try to touch the hem of their garments to experience how they feel. My hat is off to them, and my thanksgiving as well.

   And I try not to forget...

  

  

Narnia, Lucy and a Meaning for Life

   Days ago, I guess probably weeks ago, we set out on a project to read all of the Narnia books, All seven.

   I had never read them at all, had heard about them all my life, but figured I was past the correct age to take them up. My wife had read a couple but not the whole series.

   So I bought all seven and set to reading them out loud.

   First of all, I liked the stories..

   The heroes were good and the villains were bad..

   I liked the allegories..

   And I liked the ending paragraph, which were the last words in the last book:

      "And for us this is the end of of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

   The books were great on many levels, the stories, the adventures, the symbolism, and the ending, as they made one think of the world we live in and the worlds beyond. Wrapping your mind about that is well worth the effort and puts our lives in perspective to the whole.

   And there were a couple of other things that helped us to enjoy them.

   There was a girl in the stories, and her name was Lucy. When we saw her in action and heard in our mind the words the author had given her, it reminded us of one of our grand daughters who has the same name. We could see her in the story with her smiles, wit and energy, giving us a reference point to real life in our world.

   And there was the fact that we did a lot of our reading the last thing in the day, right before bedtime. Much better to drift off to sleep with the stories in our minds than images of the Nightly News.

   We might even read them again one day.

   They were definitely worth the time.

  

A Time Arrives

   For some months now my blog posts have gotten more infrequent. When I first began several years back, I tried to write every day. Lately I have been fortunate to get one done once or twice a week.

   Now I begin to realize that even a couple of times per week may also be more than I can do.

   I also note that, according to the stats kept by Blogger, that I have written 999 posts, so this one is number 1000.

   Maybe time to work on a different schedule…

   It takes some uninterrupted time for me to get my mind in gear and my thoughts organized these days. I realize that there is not much in them that is unique or new, but I do enjoy sitting down, thinking about things, and then putting them into printed form even if it is only on the computer.

   But I can't continue to count on that kind of time much anymore.

   Care giving does not seem to run on a predictable schedule. Not that it takes more time per se, or is more time consuming, but just more subject to change on a daily basis. It is not crises oriented, but availability for it is becoming more important.

   So I am operating more from an "I don't know" position when it comes to time management.

   When I do not post for several days, or maybe even several weeks or longer, it may not mean that we have a deterioration in health, but that the stringing together of uninterrupted time may be more difficult then.

   So please know that I do like to write these things, and will as time allows.

   Hold on, there is an interruption coming as I speak…..I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

   OK, coffee has been fixed and is now being consumed, back to this…

   With all that above out of the way, I wanted to leave you with a photographic moment the other night over at Epworth.

   Having arrived several minutes before sundown, I left my wife in the car and strolled over to a large magnolia tree to see if I could get a good shot of one of the flowers down on a lower limb where it would compose into a full flower picture.

   Later, upon loading the pic into the developing computer program, I noticed a black spot prominent on the very white flower. Upon further magnification it looked like this..

   Is that a mosquito on the flower? Or what?

   And there was a sunset of sorts, too.

A Story Within A Story...

   This is a story, well, really a story within a story. It is the story of a church visit from just the other day.

   Here is a photograph of the Burnt Fort Chapel, originally from the 1890s, rebuilt in 1977 using the same plan, and materials from the site.

   But, before I get to this new story, background is needed:

   Way back, when Mayre and I were doing our courthouse tour of GA county seats (all 156 of them), we were in a hurry to get all of them recorded before we died. We would get 5 or more courthouses photographed in a day's time, but did not spend a lot of time at any one.

   After we accomplished this journey and looked back at the photographs, we tried to remember the details of the visits to each, but it was hard. A lot of the time, we just pulled into the town, found the courthouse, took a few shots and went on our way to the next one. If we spoke to anyone, it was probably to ask where the restrooms were.

   A lot of the time, we visited these towns on a weekend when there was no one around.

   Like the Talbot County courthouse on a Sunday.

   Sometimes a courthouse person would ask us what we were up to and, after we explained our visit, they might volunteer information or give us a quick tour.

   Like we received from the Probate Judge in Schley County in Ellaville.

   After we finished the courthouses and thought about what we had done, it was obvious that we needed to have spent more time in each location, talked to people and gotten the feel of the place. But our emphasis was on the completion of the project. If we had tried to really get into each of the histories and happenings and spent a day in each place, we would still be out there. Again, I mention that 156 counties, spread over a large state, might take a pretty long time.

   But, we realized that the ones that meant the most to us were the ones where we had a personal contact and conversation with people in the courthouse or town.

   Fast forward to recent times:

   Now we like to visit old churches, especially those in rural settings. Many times these are deserted places, churches that used to be. They are situated out of the mainstream of current life. They are great to photograph, but we always wonder what the people were like who worshiped there.

   Like Oak Grove Baptist in Camden County

   Or Providence Methodist, likewise in Camden County

   The story for today is our visit to the Burnt Fort Chapel, again located in Camden county. It was a congregation that had existed from 1890, and folks met and worshiped there until the church was disbanded in 1947. The building was allowed to decay so as to be unusable, but some locals decided to re-erect the building to the original specifications using wood from the trees on the site or pulled from the nearby Satilla River.

   They had also moved an old one-room schoolhouse onto the property, and there was a cemetery on the grounds with graves of people born in the 1700s.

   Here is where we get into the story within a story:

   While I was moving around the church building taking different shots from a variety of angles, a car drove through and made its way on down the lane to the cemetery. I could see a man moving among the gravestones.

   As I was finishing up, the man ended his work and came back toward me. I thought, "good, now I can ask a few questions", my personal wishes could be satisfied.

   I did not have to flag him down, he pulled to a stop and asked what I was doing.

   In my answer, I began to ask him about the church, the schoolhouse and the cemetery. I wanted to get the flavor of the whole enterprise to put a more personal face on the history and dreams of the people.

   I did get a lot of that, but I got more. I got his personal history, his wife's family history, his work history, his military history, the details of his involvement with Pershing missiles in Europe, His work on the rebuilding of the church, and more.

   As the gnats ate me up, I realized that maybe I had gotten more than I wished for. As I tried to work my way back toward the car, he continued to tell stories, until I had to break into the middle of his sentence to plead my wife's condition in the hot car (although at least she did not have the gnats).

   It is a photographic journey to an old church that no doubt we will remember.

   And we will keep our wishes closer to ourselves.

A Doxology Day

   As I look back on yesterday (Sunday), what I see is a day of blessing.

   Some of it may be somewhat trivial, but a lot was straight from God (maybe all of it), but you be the judge.

   Start it off with a beautiful morning, sunshine and cooler, with clear skies.

   Then embellish the day with our viewing of the streaming live service of our church. Since it is not easy for us to attend in person, this is the next best thing. The service was good, the sermon right on, and it was a good way to begin the day.

   After a snack and a walk around the condo area, we came back in for a nice lunch and a time of rest on the back porch.

   Knowing that I had planned to spend the day with her, as I do most every day, Mayre encouraged me to find someone to play 9 holes of golf with. That I did, and had a good round, only 3 over par, a score that I don't often get these days.

   This may have been the trivial blessing, but it sure felt good to me to be able to get out and hit that little white ball around, and even come back with the same ball at the end of the round. A good two hour walk for sure.

   Then as the day wore on toward evening, the phone rang and our neighbor upstairs wanted to know if she could bring us something for our supper. She had fixed some salad dishes for a picnic, and, since they were leaving the next day, she had more than they could use.

   I was sitting on the back porch when that call came, and I had just been thinking of what I might have for supper.

   Bingo!

   A meal of potato salad, kale salad, and chicken salad with even a strawberry dessert. It was all good and very appreciated. We even had a pasta salad to carry over till today (Monday).

   I have never heard a day that had the adjective "Doxology" attached to it, but to me, it fit perfectly.

   So we thanked God for all the blessings of this day, and the people in our lives that helped make it possible.

   And we were happy to sing...

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Amen and Amen

And the sun set on a great Sunday. (photo taken at the end of a Sunday at Epworth by the Sea.)

Reading Children's Books Now...

   Shouldn't I be reading some deeper stuff?

   Here I am, at my age, enjoying books that are generally referenced as children's literature. Maybe it is regression on my part, but perhaps it is more.

   As most of my readers will know, over the past months, I have taken to reading books aloud to my wife. Mayre has enjoyed this activity, and, I confess, I have too. We have for the most part taken a particular author and read all the books in a particular series.

   Thus we have read the books by Alexander McCall Smith known as the No. 1 Ladies Detective series, the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear, and the Armand Gabache novels by Louise Penny.

   Currently we are onto The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis.

   I confess that I had never read any of these as a child. I knew that my grandchildren had gotten a lot of enjoyment out of them, but, by the time they were into them, I figured we had moved into more adult titles.

   Then I read somewhere that those of us over 60, even if we had enjoyed Lewis long before, should take another look.

   So we did, and it has been a great experience.

   I bought all seven in the series and began with the Magician's Nephew, a book that really lays the groundwork for the whole lot, even if it was not the first book written.

   Then we read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Horse and His Boy. Now we are on Prince Caspian, and, at the rate we are turning pages, we will finish all seven next week.

   Granted, the stories are good, but I have particularly enjoyed the Christian symbolism with Aslan, the other beasts of Narnia, and the children.

   Just children's books?

   Just fantasy writings with witches, talking beasts, a dangerous lion and others interacting with human children?

   I think not, and I might have to go back one day and read them all over again. I don't want to miss anything in the story, and there is a lot in there.

   Could Tolkien be next?