Two days after Christmas, I headed to Southeastern North Carolina. The 29th was my father’s 85th birthday, and my sister had planned a party that I didn’t want to miss.
My sister presents her carrot cake to my father for his birthday
The weather for the first five days were incredible. On New Year’s Eve, my dad and I paddled from Trail’s End to the south end of Masonboro Island. My brother brought everyone else along in his boat, so that we might have lunch on the island. My daughter was introducing Apple, her new dog to the ocean (I even gave Apple a ride in the kayak).
Apple trying out the water (It’s hard to believe that it was warm enough to be in the water on New Year’s Eve!)
Not my typical paddling style. The high brace was to keep from hitting the dog in my lap.
After an early night on New Year’s Eve, Donna and I headed out to the beach for a New Year’s Sunrise before she and Caroline headed back to the mountains (I was going to stay through January 5). The idea was to watch the first sunrise of the new year, but a fog bank offshore disappointed those waiting for the sunrise along the beach.
Sunrise at the Kure Beach pier
On New Year’s Day, the wind picked up, so Dad and I headed inland and did a black water paddle on Rice’s Creek. We paddled upstream several miles, to where the creek becomes just wider than a kayak. I left my sea kayak at home and used a boat of a friend of my dad (that was 12 feet long instead of 18 feet, making it easier to navigate).
Paddling on Rice’s Creek
A poem written on Rice’s Creek (I’m not sure who’s the one with dark eyes)
The whole world appears in the reflection of the dark waters: Cypress, tupelo, clumps of mistletoe, puffy clouds and blue sky. Yet, I cannot see the long just underneath the water, just as your dark eyes reflect the world while hiding much.
I had planned to either go to Cape Lookout or Masonboro Island to camp for a night or two, but the weather turned rough. We had winds approaching fifty miles an hour on Monday, so we stayed home and I read. On Tuesday, my brother and I went down to scout out an area on the Waccamaw River that he wanted to see about paddling. The weather had turned cold and was freezing, but we dressed warm and covered about 13 miles of the river, starting at Conway, South Carolina to Peachtree Landing. When I lived in Whiteville, in the early 1980s, I had paddled on the Waccamaw several times, between Lake Waccamaw and Pireway. I’d never been on the river in South Carolina.
Running along the lower WaccamawConway now has a nice waterfrontAn old log hauler (designed to run on light rail track)I think these are Ibis in this tree (Kingfishers were the most common birds seen along Rice’s Creek and the Waccamaw)
I came back to the mountains on Wednesday, between two winter storms (one was on Monday and the second on Thursday).
Back home, having missed the first snow of the season in the mountains
Jeff Garrison Mayberry and Bluemont Presbyterian Churches Christmas Eve 2021 Luke 2:1-20 (verse 19)
This video contains a whole service that includes music along with the homily
Growing up, I never felt like our Christmas tree was the real thing. Yeah, it was a live tree; we’d never go for the artificial variety. But it was store bought, purchased from the Optimist Club, which was logical since they supported the local Little League program.
On the night we put up the tree, we’d all wait patiently—or maybe not so patiently—for Dad to come home from work. When he arrived, we’d pile in the car and drive to the lot on Oleander Drive. It was a makeshift operation, some bare bulbs hanging from wires overhead illuminating the lot that in summer was a putt-putt golf course. Trees stood up against wires running between poles. We’d go through the lot looking at 100s of them. None ever seem perfect. And the ones I liked, my brother or sister wouldn’t like. Or it was too big. It was hard to get all of us to agree. After 15 minutes of this fruitless exercise, my parents assumed authority and picked out a tree. Dad paid for it. Then he tied it to the top of our car for the ride home.
In some ways, it’s odd that my dad purchased a tree instead of finding a place to cut one. He’s the type of man who never brought anything he could make, and that included our tree stand. Had the bomb dropped on our house, something kids worried about in the 60s, I’m sure Dad’s tree stand would have been the only thing to survive. I was in Middle School before I could pick it up. It was constructed from a large flat piece of 3/8-inch plate steel with a four-inch steel tube welded to it. The trunk went into the tube. At the top of the tube, he’d drilled holes and tapped it so the bolts could be tightened to hold the tree in place. It was hard to get water into the tube, so after the first year, he drilled a bunch of holes in the side of the tube and then welded a shorter eight-inch pipe over it. We could pour water into the larger tube, and it would seep into the trunk. This tree stand was so solid that the tree’s trunk would have broken before it would have toppled.
As a child, I wondered why we didn’t have one of those red stands with green legs made of tin, like all other families. I was envious of those flimsy tree stands sold at J. C. Fields. As an adult, before moving to an artificial tree, I found myself wishing for Dad’s old stand. The tree in that stand would have survived kids, dogs, cats, and rowdy guests, all of which have been known to topple a tree my living room.
My maternal grandparents still lived on a farm and never had a store-bought tree. For me, they had a real tree—an Eastern Cedar—thick and full and fragrant compared to the scrawny firs the Optimist Club imported from Canada. My mother, obviously trying to console us, said firs brought down from Canada were better because you had more room between branches on which to hang ornaments. She was trying to convince herself, I’m sure. Deep down, she knew that for a tree to be authentic, you had to select the one for the sacrifice, and cut it you’re your own hands.
Of all the trees I’ve seen in my life, the one that stands out as the ideal tree was the one my grandmother and grandfather Faircloth had for Christmas 1966. It was a full, well-shaped cedar my grandfather had cut near the branch that ran behind his tobacco barn. Although I didn’t witness the harvesting of this tree, I imagine him, sitting on top of his orange Allis Chambers tractor, with the tree tied behind the seat, hauling it back home. This tree took up a quarter of their living room and its scent filled their home. Grandma decorated it simply: white lights, red bulbs, and silver icicles. And, of course, there were presents underneath along with boxes of nuts and fruit.
They gave me a Kodak Instamatic Camera, that year, the kind that used the drop-in 126-film cartridges and those square disposable flashes that mounted on top. It was the closest thing to a foolproof camera ever built. I got good use out of that camera. It’d be nearly another decade before I replaced it with a 35 millimeter. My grandfather did not feel good that Christmas, but after some coaxing, I came outside so I could take a picture of him and my grandmother in front of the house.
Even though I lost this picture years ago, I can still visualize the snapshot in my mind. Grandma and Granddad stood in front of their porch, by one of the large holly bushes that framed their steps. My slender grandmother, a bit taller than her husband, has her arm around him. They’re both smiling. Granddad sports his usual crew cut. In the picture, my grandparents are a bit off-center and crooked, for the camera in the hands of a kid wasn’t as foolproof as Kodak led everyone to believe. But the image was sharp. It still is, in my mind.
My granddad never raised another crop of tobacco. Although I don’t know for sure, he may have never even driven his tractor again, for early that January, his heart gave out. Perhaps that’s why the memory is so vivid.
I’m sure my Christmas memories are normal. You probably have similar ones—some are good, and others are of Christmases that didn’t live up to expectation. And then there are those sad Christmases in which we lost loved ones. There’s nothing wrong with a normal Christmas, for if you look at the birth narrative in Luke’s gospel, that’s what the first one was all about. It was business as usual. Mary and Joseph have traveled to Bethlehem to do their civic duty, registering for the census. You have shepherds working the graveyard shift. Even birth itself is normal. It’s how we all came into this world. In this ordinary world God enters. Good news! God appears in an ordinary world, in an ordinary life, just like ours. We don’t have to do anything special to experience God. The Almighty finds us waiting in line to meet a government bureaucrat or while working the nightshift. God finds us where we are, that’s one of the messages of Christmas.
The Good Book tells us that after the shepherds left the Baby Jesus, rejoicing and praising God, Mary pondered in her heart all the things she’d heard and experienced. The late Raymond Brown, a well-known scholar who wrote the most detailed commentary on the birth narratives of the Gospels, says the word “pondered” literally means “thrown side by side.”[1] Mary brought together in her heart all the events occurring in Bethlehem and during her pregnancy and juggled them around in an attempt to understand.
There must have been a variety of emotions of which we can only speculate. How much of her Son’s future did she really understand? Possibly not much. It would be thirty years before Jesus’ ministry would begin. And even after he started his ministry, there were times Mary and her family tried to talk Jesus out of it.[2] A normal mother, trying to protect her son. The birth of any child is miraculous to the mother, so maybe Mary just thought all that happened that night in Bethlehem was normal. As the years went by forgot about the angels and the prophecies concerning her son.
Mary is important to the story, not only because she is the mother of our Savior. Mary’s the only person mentioned in the gospels whose presence bridge the life of Jesus. She gives birth, she’s at the cross with her heart heavy with sorry, probably still pondering and wondering, and on the first day of the week is there to experience the resurrection.[3]
Ever since that first Christmas some 2000 years ago in the small town of Bethlehem, the day has been one in which we ponder its meaning while creating our own memories. The picture etched in my mind of me photographing my grandparents reminds me of the family from which I sprung, a family who saw to it that I had a chance to know the Christ-child as someone more just a reason to receive gifts.
Those trees I remember from my childhood, whose roots historically are pagan, have become a symbol for the life Christ brought into the world, the greatest gift we can receive. The impossibility of finding the perfect tree, a task so daunting for my family, always seemed so silly afterwards for even imperfect ones become perfect when decorated. And God works the same miracles in us, taking what is weak and imperfect and using it to carry out his mission in the world. And if I wanted to stretch it, I could even point to my Dad’s Christmas tree stand as a metaphor for the solid foundation we all need in our lives! The memories of Christmas that stay with me are not of receiving gifts. It is the assurance of being loved, by parents and grandparents, and ultimately by God.
Tonight, ponder what this all means. I suppose for most of us, our fondest Christmas memories are as children or when we had children of our own. In a profound way, Christmas is about children. Think of the possibilities that rest in an infant.
The birth of a child in Bethlehem, the joy of a child tearing into wrapped presents and then hugging a parent, the twinkle of candlelight in our eyes as we sing Silent Night help remind us what it’s all about. And when we hear those words from Jesus’ adult ministry, that unless we come as a child, we will never enter the kingdom of God,[4] we can think about how we viewed things as a child. Perhaps this is what we should be pondering as we once again recall and celebrate God’s entry into our world. How might we become child-like and accept our Savior into our heart? Amen.
Recently, I came across another wonderful mediation about Christmas and children from “The Plough,” a devotional site for Christmas. Click here to read it.
[1]Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 406.
[2] In John 7:5, we see that Jesus’ brothers did not believe in him. Was this the reason his brothers and Mary were trying to see Jesus in Matthew 12:46 and Mark 3:31?
[3] Not only was Mary present at the death, she’s listed as being present with the early church. See Acts 1:14.
I wrote this article for in 2019, on the 300th anniversary of the hymn, for The Skinnie, a magazine for Skidaway Island. I have slightly altered the text for this blog post.
Issac Watt’s Role
This year, with a young puppy in the house, the tree is locked up
A little over three hundred years ago, in 1719, English hymn-writer Isaac Watts published the words we know today as “Joy to the World.” Today it’s one of the most popular Christmas carols in America, with its hopeful and joyful message. However, “Joy to the World” was not written as a Christmas carol. It would take nearly 120 years before the carol we know was first sung.
Isaac Watts is perhaps the greatest author of hymns ever. Supposedly, when he was a boy, he complained to his father about church music. Like a good parent, his father suggested that instead of complaining, he should work to make it better. From this challenge Watts, set out to write hymns, a relatively new style of music for Protestant Churches in the early 17th Century. At this time, especially in the English world, the Psalms served as the main source of lyrics for music sung in churches. As a pastor in a dissenting English Church, Watts began writing hymns. While he often drew from the Psalms, upon which he would modernize the language and Christianize the content, he also wrote hymns that reflected a trust in an Almighty God and in a Savior who was willing to die for humanity. Churches in Britain and America quickly adopted Watts’ hymns. These hymns include “I Sing the Mighty Power of God,” “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” “From All that Dwell Below the Skies,” and of course, “Joy to the World.”
Influence of Psalm 96
“Joy to the World” was based on Psalm 96, a royal Psalm of God’s enthronement as King. King David sings this Psalm, we learn in 1st Chronicles, as he moves the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. At a time in history, nearly a millennia before Christ, most nations had their own gods. Psalm 94 proclaims the God of the Hebrews, the God of Abraham, as reigning not just over the Hebrew people, or just in Jerusalem, but over the world. The God of the Psalmist is supreme throughout the world. God will rule fairly. God will administer justice with equity. God’s deeds are such that all will stand in awe and, along with all that is in heaven and on earth, will sing out in joy.
Watts took Psalm 96 and tweaked it in a manner that reflects Christ’s second coming. In addition to the three traditional stanzas of the Psalm, which he modified, he added a fourth (which he inserted between the second and third stanzas).
No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found, Far as the curse is found, far as, far as the curse is found.
This stanza reflects Watt’s eschatological hope based on Christ’s return. God reverses the curse of Eden. It was a wonderful poem of the Second Coming. Watt’s titled his piece, “The Messiah’s Coming and Kingdom.”
The words for the carol were written three hundred years ago. However, it required more creativity for this poem to became the beloved Christmas Carol we now know.
The Role of George Frederick Handel
The composer for the music who he combined with Watt’s poem was George Frederick Handel of Germany. Handel and Watts were contemporaries and were both living in England at the same time, but the two of them did not work on this carol. The music comes from Handel’s “Messiah,” a popular piece often sung by choirs and in concerts during the Christmas season. But this adaptation of the two works did not occur for another century and on another continent, long after the deaths of Watts and Handel.
The Role of Lowell Mason
Lowell Mason was born in 1792, into a musically talented family in Medfield, Massachusetts. As a child and young man, he learned to play the clarinet, violin, cello, flute, piano and organ and became a choir director in his home town at the age of 17. A few years later, he moved to Savannah, where he worked in a dry-goods store and later in a bank. During this time, he studied under a Frederick Abel, a music teacher from Germany and began to serve as the choir director and organist at Independent Presbyterian Church. Mason helped create the first African-American Sunday School at Savannah’s First Bryan Baptist Church. This was at a time when the education of slaves was condemned throughout the South.
After returning north, he later served as music director for the well-known abolitionist preacher Lyman Beecher. While working in Savannah, Mason became interested in musical composition and had to travel to Boston in 1922 to have his first collection of arrangements published as there were no publishers in the South with the capacity to print musical fonts.
Mason moved to Boston in 1827, where he served as organist and choirmaster for several prominent churches. He worked for a time as music director for the well-known abolitionist preacher, Lyman Beecher. During this era, he became an American proponent for European-styled music. At the time, adherents of the traditional American “shape-note” tradition satirized the European-style as the “Better Music Boys.” However, because of Lowell and others insisted on music education in schools, America eventually adopted the European styled music.
Mason was an important figure in music in early America who wrote, arranged, or composed music for hundreds of hymns including “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” He also wrote secular music including the popular nursery rhyme, “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
Mason’s most popular tune, however, is “Joy to the World, in which he arranged the words of Isaac Watts’ poem with tunes of Handel to create the popular Christmas carol. “Joy to the World” is considered the most loved carol in America. Almost every congregation will sing it during the Christmas season and just about every artist who has recorded Christmas Carols have included this hymn in their repertoire. The song is uplifting, as it reflects the Christian hope of a new and peaceful world in which Christ will reign as King.
This year, as you hear this song sung on the radio or perhaps in a Candlelight service on Christmas Eve, may you experience joy.
For Christmas Eve services along the Blue Ridge, Bluemont will hold its service at 4 PM and Mayberry at 6 PM. Both churches will be celebrating communion and invite you all to attend.
John Hassell Yeatts, A Long and Winding Road (1989), 120 pages.
The long and winding road referred to in the title is the Blue Ridge Parkway which divided the little community of Mayberry in the mid-1930s. This was at the time when the author was becoming a man. He began working at the Dan River dam project below Mayberry and his life’s work continues as he worked on dams around the country. He later attends college and goes on to work as a reporter and writer, as well as working with agencies such as the March of Dimes and American Cancer Association. In his later years, Yeatts came back to the Mayberry of his youth for the summers. He also published several books about the community.
These are wonderful memories. The author grew up at a time when chestnut trees dominated the Appalachian Mountains, when most people travelled by horse or buggy, and when life was hard. He was present in the old Mayberry School, when Bob Childress called for the building of a church (now Mayberry Presbyterian Church). His father delivered mail for 35 years, mostly using horses. Later in his career, he’d use a Model T. In the days before UPS, his father had to have extra packhorses for the mail order packages from Sears and Roebuck and Montgomery Wards. Yeatts remembers a car salesman from Mount Airy introduce Ford’s Model T to the community and he travels to Stuart to meet those coming back from the First World War. There, for the first time in his life, he sees a locomotive, as the iron horse pulls the train into Stuart from the main line in Martinsville. He also remembers the lumbering of the chestnut and watching the trees hauled away as the blight killed the forest that dominated these parts. In these stories, we learn about old mills where farmers ground grain, and about his tee-totalling mother, who would have joined Carrie Nation if she had the opportunity. This book is filled with good stories, that take the reader back into a simple but difficult time to make a living on the mountains.
This book, along with the books of Aaron McAlexander, provide a colorful history of Mayberry. The difference in the two books is that Yeatts (who I’m sure is related to McAlexander), is a couple decades older and so his memories extend further back, to a time before the automobile, tractors, and tourists. In both books, the Mayberry store (which has gone by many names) is prominent.
Gregory Orr, River Inside the River: Poems (New York: Norton, 2013), 124 pages.
Last summer, when on study leave, I found myself engrossed in A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetryby Gregory Orr. Having not read any of his poetry selections of the University of Virginia professor, I picked up this collection. This book has three major sections. The first, “Eden and After” looks at our first parents in the garden and its aftermath. In the second, “The City of Poetry,” I have a sense that Orr was describing the city of refuge in Genesis 4, where Cain fled upon the death of Able. As a child, Orr had killed his brother in a hunting accident. The final section is titled after the book’s title, “River Inside the River” While Orr explores new themes, he also continues building on themes already introduced. Overall, I enjoyed the collection. I like his use of words and metaphors. My only complaint was his use of the “F” word. It certainly got my attention and was only used a few times. It was just a shock to read it in such a work, especially since he uses it to describe that which Adam and Eve did in the garden. But that word is just too harsh. Of course, Orr uses this word less than other books I’ve read. In Matterhorn, which is reviewed below, the word is used a lot but in a combat situation it seems more appropriate.
Philip Conners, A Song for a River, (Audible, 2018) 6 hours and 44 minutes.
This book was in my to-be-read pile for some time. When it showed up as a freebee for Audible subscribers, I jumped on it and enjoyed the book. Conners spent thirteen years as a fire lookout in the Gila Wilderness area in Southern New Mexico. I didn’t even know that there were still fire lookouts into the 21st century! This book weaves together several tragedies: his own brother’s suicide, his divorce, the death of his friend John who was also a fire lookout, and the death of three students from Silver City who were killed in a plane crash, along with his own medical issues. Weaving into these deaths and his divorce are stories of fire in the oldest wilderness area in the United States (As a young forester, Aldo Leopold, author of A Sand County Almanac, had been instrumental in saving this land).
Conner also experiences danger as a lookout. One fire sweep through the high country. Conner is saved by a helicopter sent in to rescue him. Throughout the book, we learn of larger and larger fires, that burn hotter and at higher altitudes from global warming. In addition to the danger of fire, Conner talks about risky river trips he makes in this part of the world. Toward the end of the book, we learn that Conner remarries. While I enjoyed the book, I felt it was a bit disjointed. That said, I do plan to read his other books.
Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War (Audible, 2010), 21 hours and 11 minutes.
Marlantes was a Marine officer in Vietnam, and this is his first novel. The story takes place in late 1968 and early 1969, as the narrator begins his deployment as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corp. Assigned to a company that’s securing a firebase close to the DMZ, the firebase is named Matterhorn. The young officer dreams of rising rapidly as he serves in combat, in the hopes he can return to law school and become a politician. But as he is thrown in with men who long to survive, he learns important lessons. The story centers around a decision by the top brass to abandon the base, only to then require the Marines to retake it, after the North Vietnamese have repurposed the base for their own purposes. This was nearly suicidal mission, but the mission is ultimately successful. Along the way, we learn of the men in his company, especially the issues around race. There is even a divide among the “black brothers,” between some who are sending back weapons to America to help in the fight against racism and others who just want to survive or to get high. We also learn about the problems that come from above, from officers trying to please politicians and making decisions that are almost impossible to carry out in the field. While this is a long story, it is well told and shows the horror of the war.
Small communities tend to do the best with Christmas parades, and the Meadows of Dan Christmas parade was no exception. The line was long and involved so many people that you would think there wouldn’t be anyone watching. But the street was filled with folks, especially kids with bags as the parade is like Mardi Gras, with people throwing candy (I didn’t see any beads).
Roger pulls the float into town for the parade
Richard not only helped built the float, he was also the Parade Marshall
Cedar City UT Christmas Parade 1996 (some of those kids now have children as old as they were then)
This year, the good folks at Mayberry Presbyterian Church decided to create a church float. This was a community effort, which I suggested based on something we’d done when I was a pastor in Utah. Shep purchased the 2x4s, most of which he and Richard split into 2x2s. Fred loaned us the trailer. A frame was built with the help of Joey, Mike and Linda, Richard, and Henri. Then Richard and I ran down to a place near Martinsburg, where we were able to obtain the MDF board at $7 a sheet. These we brought back and cut out the windows and doors. A team the consisted of Mike and Linda , Angie and Shep, Richard and Ann painted the rocks and the roof to match the church. Sharon fed us with hot dogs from Jane’s Country Cafe.
The frame on Fred’s trailer Painting rocksPanels drying (notice the real church in the background)
After the panels were try, we screwed the walls and roof to the frame. We taped plastic over the windows, put up a tree inside the church, and taped battery-operated candles onto the windows.
Steeple Jacks Mona and Norris in front of the float after the parade
At the same time, Norris and Mona were constructing the steeple. If he gets tired of being a financial planner, Norris could have a career as a steeple jack! We installed the steeple while waiting for the parade to begin, feeling it might be a bit dangerous to drive it the 3 ½ miles to where the parade lined up. We were not sure if the steeple (held on with a few screws) could survived a 45 mile an hour wind.
For the parade, Roger drove Mike N’s truck, pulling the float. In front of the church, sitting on hay bales, were Mary and Joseph with baby Jesus laying the manger. Madison and Kegon Played Mary and Joseph with Jesus being played by a Mattel doll. Standing in the seat of the truck, head poked out of the sunroof, was Happy. Dressed as an angel, she harked the coming of the season. She also threw out candy canes with information about our Christmas Eve services and one of the many “legends” of
the candy cane on the back.
Lining up for the parade
The parade was probably two miles long (for a business district that is about two blocks long). Not to be overly proud, but we took first-place. Thanks everyone for your hard work! (I hope I didn’t forget anyone).
This year’s Christmas Eve services for the Rock Churches: Bluemont at 4 PM and Mayberry at 6 PM. There will also be a Christmas Eve program available on our YouTube Channel after 5 PM. If you’re not in our area, please check out the program! Also, if you like it, please like, and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Coffee can in a field behind my grandmother’s house, 2007
I lived in Petersburg, Virginia, during the first three years I was in elementary school. But only one year do I remember having thanksgiving there, with a turkey my father shot while deer hunting on the Nottingway River. The other two years, we headed back to Moore County, North Carolina for Thanksgiving. The song, “Over the hills and through the woods, to grandma’s house we’d go,” played in my head as we drove through the night. We’d leave Wednesday afternoon, after school and after my dad finished work. This way, we were in Pinehurst for Thanksgiving morning and would drive home on Sunday. On one occasion, all the men of Culdee Presbyterian gathered for breakfast and a brief worship service. Perhaps this was designed to keep the men from interfering with things in the kitchen. It may have been the same trip, that all the men at my grandparents’ home went out hunting in the afternoon. My grandfather knew better than to get into my grandmother’s way in the kitchen.
We gathered in my grandparents’ front yard and crossed Juniper Lake Road, heading back to a field by the foundations of a house long gone. I’d been here many times. Once my uncle took my brother and me to a graveyard out behind where the house once stood. He told us of the folks buried there. Each grave was marked with a metal plaque welded to a metal post and stuck in the ground. I’d seen such markers before, on freshly dug graves in the cemetery by the church. These types of markers would stand until replaced with a tombstone. Larry concocted a story about these folks being too poor to buy any permanent tombstone. It just didn’t right to hunt in a graveyard and I expressed my concern and quickly learned that we’d been duped. There had been no cemetery. My uncle and his friends had collected the grave markers from the trash from the cemetery by the church and created a make-believe graveyard.
This may have been my Uncle Larry’s first hunt. He was probably twelve or thirteen. I was six or seven. My brother and I were too young to have a gun. There by the old foundation, Dad and my grandfather consulted. Larry would go out point, with his youth model shot gun. My dad with his 12-gauge pump, followed by my brother, skirted the south side of the field, through the sumac. I was glad that I wasn’t going with Dad for I never liked the look of sumac, especially in the fall as the dried black berries drooped down, creating an image for me that would give Freud a field day. I stayed with my grandfather, and we worked the north edge of the field. Granddaddy held his Browning double-barrel with both hands, the gun crossing his chest. I walked in his steps a few feet behind. We skirted along the edge of the sand hill, where the land dropped toward Nick’s Creek.
Time moved slowly as we crossed the field in anticipation. Rabbits might be hiding in the broomsedge. Quail often concealed themselves under clumps of wire grass. I had flushed out coveys before, when not hunting, and the sudden beating of the birds’ wings as they took to flight made my heart stop. But this time, we were ready, knowing if a covey flushed, it’d be over in a second. Sadly, we found no birds, nor did we see any rabbits. After this field, we headed through woods, under longleaf pines and by blackjack oaks. Like before, we crossed through a few older fields grown up in broomsedge before heading home empty handed. No one had even fired a shot.
It was late afternoon as we stepped into the house. There, grandma, and mom had just finished preparing our Thanksgiving feast. We finally saw the only bird that mattered that day, a big one, already clean, basted, roasted, and browned. It sat tall in the in the center of the table, surrounded by all kinds of goodies. By the time we were done was just a carcass awaiting the soup pot.
Over the past few years, I have been concerned on the lack of civility in our public lives. We see it in politics, in grocery stores, and on the highways. Before COVID, I was activity attempting to foster conversation about civility. It’s needed in our world. Because of my interest, a parishioner in one of my churches gave me this book.
Peter Wehner, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump (New York: HarperCollins, 2019), 264 pages including notes.
The death of politics sounds like a good idea. But is it? Politics is how we work out our differences without resorting to violence. If politics dies, so does our democratic society.
Peter Wehner is a life-long Republican and a conservative who served in Reagan’s and both Bush’s Presidential administrations. He’s concerned over the current state of our political discourse, believing that we are on a dangerous road. We look with contempt at those with whom we disagree. We despite politics when we don’t get our way. We’re angry. Many people have lost hope in the political process to help guide us peacefully out of this situation. In this book, Wehner begins discussing how we’ve gotten into such a position as a society. While he was concerned over Donald Trump, Wehner acknowledges this slip has been going on in America at least since Vietnam. What gave Trump his power was his ability to harness such negative energy.
This is not really a book about Trump. Wehner’s concerns are much deeper. He begins with a discussion on how politics is a noble calling. Then he delves into how we found ourselves into a position where we hold politics in disdain. Before offering suggestions on how to make things better, Wehner provides a civil lesson in how politics should work. He draws on the political insights of Aristotle, John Locke, and Abraham Lincoln. As a conservative, he also pulls ideas from the British statesman, Edmund Burke, along with many Americans conservatives, especially Reagan and William Buckley.
My favorite part of the book are the middle chapters (4 and 5), titled “Politics and Faith” and “Words Matter.” While Separation of Church and State is enshrined in the Constitution, America is fundamentally a religious country. The founders of our nation, while wanting to keep the church and state separate, “argued that religion was essential in providing a moral basis for a free society” (66). Wehner builds upon the Biblical foundation that we’re all created in God’s image. Recalling the words of Martin Luther King, Jr, he reminds that church that it is not the master nor the servant of the state, “but the conscience of the state” (88). He is very critical of many within the evangelical circles and of Trump. He suggests that Trump’s morality is more Nietzschean than Christian and that many evangelicals are “doing more damage to the Christian witness than the so-called ‘New Atheists’ ever could” (80-81).
Wehner ends the chapter with four suggestions for Christians in today’s political climate: 1. Begin with Jesus, with what he taught and the example he modeled. 2. Articulate a coherent vision of politics, informed by a “Christian moral vision of justice and the common good.” 3. Model “moving from anger to understanding, from revenge toward reconciliation, from grievance toward gratitude, and from fear toward trust and love.” And finally, 4., “treat all people as ‘neighbors they are to love (86ff).’” Interestingly, in his acknowledgements, he thanked Philip Yancey (whose memoir I reviewed a few weeks ago) for helping him with this chapter.
Chapter five, on words, he begins recalling many of John Kennedy’s speeches. As a student of politics, even though a Republican, he noted the eloquence of Kennedy’s style that launch a decade in which America made great gains ending up on the moon. It is interesting, too, how Presidents tend to be remembered by their words more than their policies, of which he provides examples across political spectrum and ages. Drawing from David Reynold’s book, Mightier than the Sword, which looked at the impact of Harriett Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin on changing the discourse over slavery in America, Wehner makes the case that words can help move a society in a more noble manner.
Wehner also shows how words and rhetoric can be misused. Here, he primarily focuses on how words can help foster racial biases toward others. He also notes our tendency toward “confirmation bias,” where we tend to listen and read only that which confirms our own prejudices. He is critical with how words are used as weapons, and how truth no longer matters as long “our side” wins. Wehner suggests as an antidote to our bias, that we read widely. He ends this chapter drawing from the English author, “George Orwell, especially his essay “Politics and the English Language.” He suggests that reclaiming language is necessary for us to reclaim politics (139).
In chapter 6, Wehner turns to the topic of moderation, compromise, and civility. Here he begins to offer more suggestions with how we might live together peacefully despite our differences. The goal of society is not to have everyone think the same, but to allow people coexistence. Drawing upon the ideas of James Madison, he recalls how the founders of our constitution understood humanity as flawed but also capable of virtue and self-government. Sadly, he sees our current situation as pushing us in the opposite direction, toward alienation from one another. To reverse direction, we need the constitution’s system of checks and balances to work. He makes a case for moderation to temper the populist anger that judges others to be “evil and irredeemable” (151). Moderation understands the complexity of our world and “distrusts utopian visions and simple solutions” (153). When we are moderate in our ideas, we are willing to compromise (which isn’t a bad word, but how we settle differences). Finally, we need to be civil toward one another. Here, Wehner draws from his faith, quoting the Apostle Paul advice to the Colossians, “Let your conversations be always full of grace…” and from his “fruits of the Spirit” which he encouraged the Galatians to demonstrate in their lives (163).
While Wehner encourages citizens to support candidates for office who model moderation, compromise, and civility, he also realizes that the anger within society has often been fueled by outside sources. He calls for a blockage of foreign web bot sites that spreads false information and encourage civil unrest. Organizations like “Better Angels” and “Speak Your Peace”, as well as columnists like David Brooks and Yuval Levin are offered as good examples that will lead us to a more civil society.
In his final chapter, Wehner makes the case for hope. He reminds Americans of the social regression between 1960 and 1990, which saw a 500% increase in violent crimes, 400% increase in out of wedlock births, increase in children on welfare, teenage suicide, and divorce. But then, things started to improve, with a decrease in these areas. But we’ve forgotten how things should work. He chides conservatives for focusing only on the cost of government and not on its effectiveness. Wehner also acknowledges his own failures within George W Bush’s administration in relation to Iraq, admitting that they were wrong in their assumptions. He also admits that its easier for him to be a “Monday morning quarterback” and to critique from the outside than the inside. Finally, he encourages us to care enough to act and to move beyond our current “bread and circus” style of government.
One of the keys in being civil, which Wehner recognizes, is that it must come internally. Civility won’t be achieved with conservatives demanding it of liberals, or liberals demanding it from conservatives. Instead, we all must realize that more is at stake. The soul of our nation is in danger. What can we do as individuals to help change the tenor of the political conversation? Those of us who are followers of Jesus should be at the forefront in displaying civility. I encourage others to read this book.
My eyes have feasted on a beautiful colored landscape for the past month. Slowly the trees turned color. But with last week’s heavy frost, the trees are now mostly brown or their leaves have fallen to the earth, to rot into the soil and nourish another season.
I thought I would share some of my favorite photos from this color season, along with two poems. One I wrote on Sunday evening, having done my 4 1/2 mile hike to Laurel Fork and back. Once I climbed my way up out of the hollow and the forest gave way to the hayfields, I was treated to a perfect ecliptic in the sky with four heavenly bodies (a crescent moon, Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter) visible. The other poem was written while taking Amtrak’s Crescent (formerly Southern Railroads “Southern Crescent”) from Danville, VA to Atlanta.
Mayberry Church Road in late afternoon
Ecliptic
The young moon, just above the horizon, flirts with Venus as darkness descends. The red of sunset has faded except a thin line just above the trees to the west, as Saturn and Jupiter, the only other objects visible look on with approval.
Venus and the new moon. Saturn and Jupiter would be to the left, behind the oak still clinging to its leaves. Photo taken with an iPhone, handheld. Laurel Fork early in October, with just a hint of color.
Bear Creek Road in late October
Nursery Road in late afternoon
Asleep on the Southern Crescent
Maturing moon high overhead fills my compartment with light as the blowing whistle up front announces our fleeting presence, followed by clanging bells and the flashing red lights of the crossing guards.
The train snakes into the Carolinas, with stops, I’m told, in Greensboro, High Point, Salisbury, Charlotte, Gastonia, Spartanburg, Greenville, and Clemson. But I sleep soundly and wake up in Toccoa, Georgia.
At breakfast, I’ve learned we lost a bit of time in Charlotte, as they worked on a toilet, but I never knew anything had happened.
My compartment at daybreak, on my return trip from Atlanta.
Mia, my frequent hiking companion (for short hikes)
The leaves may be gone, but there is still beauty to observe. Early November, behind Nester’s Cemetery.
Back in the late 1990s, I read several of Philip Yancey’s book. Twenty some years later, I find myself going back to his books for inspiration. This is especially true for What’s So Amazing About Grace? While Yancey often drew from personal stories, in this book he provides even more personal details of his childhood. Yancey was only a year old when his father died of polio. However, he was a college student, bringing home a date, when he accidentally learns the details of his father’s death. An iron lung kept his father alive, but he decided that instead he would trust God. Supported by all the people who were praying for him and against medical advice, he left the hospital. Sadly, it didn’t work out. Raised in poverty by his mother, he grew up not knowing the reasons behind his father’s death.
Secrets and mysteries abound in Yancey’s childhood world. A bright student, he starts school a year early and skipped the second grade. Although three years younger, he was a year behind this older brother throughout school and college. The two brothers were raised in Southern fundamentalistic churches with a holiness strain. Although their mother came from Philadelphia, she too had been raised in a church that taught the “curse of Ham” (an interpretation of scripture that assigns those of color to subservient positions within society). The two brothers grow up believing the myth of the Lost Cause and of vengeful God. It’s a frightful time as the Civil Rights movement gains strength as unrest around the Vietnam War increases. In time, both brothers revolted against their childhood. As the book ends, the older brother is attending an atheistic church in California, while the younger has become a popular Christian author.
From the beginning, the Yancey’s boys were their mother’s hope to fulfill her own dream of becoming a missionary to Africa. From an early age, she tells them the Biblical story of Hannah, who consecrated her son to the Lord and gave him to the priest, Eli, to raise him up in the temple (see 1 Samuel 1-3). For Yancey, he admits this is his least favorite story in the Bible. The pressure upon these two boys, growing up in the church (at times even living on church property where their mother leads the Sunday School) was immense.
While there is much to lament about Yancey’s childhood, he’s not bitter. “Nothing is wasted,” he acknowledges. He credits this upbringing for teaching him the importance of language and to develop a love of scripture. While he grew up with sermons mostly from Paul or the Old Testament, he learned enough about Jesus to dig deeper. He also appreciates the way the church of his youth was a family. “Like a family, [church] is a cluster of dysfunctional people. As he fully understands the gospel story, Yancey discoverers grace and finds the strength to move into a deeper relationship with God and with all God’s children.
Part of the credit for Yancey comes from his wife, who had grown up in a missionary home. The two found solace with each other. Married for 50 years, Yancey doesn’t say much about their life together. This memoir focuses on Yancey’s early years.
Sadly, Yancey’s story doesn’t end in a fairy tale. His brother and his mother haven’t spoken in decades. Yancey has sought forgiveness from some whom he’s hurt, there are others with whom he’s not been able to reconcile. The president of his college (which he never mentions by name), remains upset over the stories he told while being a student there. But in other cases, such as with his high school nemeses, Hal, he’s able to develop a new friend. Even one of his childhood pastors, of whom he’d been critical, found himself moved by Yancey’s writings on grace. Looking back, he admits to wishing he had discovered grace much earlier in his ministry.
Toward the end of the book, Yancey digs again into the story of Hannah, whom his mother had used to make him and brother feel guilty for not following her plan for their lives. He notes that it was not Hannah nor Eli that gave rise to Samuel. God called Samuel. We live for God, not for the expectations of others. Yancey claims there are two universal themes in his writings: suffering and grace. He brings them together in these pages.
I listened to the audible version of this book. The author read his own work, which is always a benefit. However, I will also buy a paper copy of the book as there is much I would like to revisit. I recommend this book, especially for those who come out of a fundamentalist background or those raised up in the era of Civil Rights.
I spent last week at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia with a group organized by the Foundation for Reformed Theology. We gather once a year to discuss agreed upon reading of serious theology. We had last meet in early March 2021 in Austin, Texas. That was the last time I’ve been on a plane. When we departed from home that year, the airport appeared to be dying. We knew our world was in a midst of change. It was good to be back together, even though the world hasn’t completely returned to normal.
Discussing Barth
This year, our major reading was from Karl Barth’s Christology section in his massive work, Church Dogmatics. In seminary, almost 35 years ago, we had to read some selections of Barth’s writings. Since then, I have only read his revised commentary on Romans, where Barth moved away from 19th liberal theology in the years after the First World War. This summer, in addition to reading the Dogmatics, I also read Christiane Tietz’s new biography of Barth which I reviewed a few months ago.
At best, I have a love/hate relationship with Barth. A brilliant man, it feels as if he wrote down every word that came into his brain. But amidst all the thoughts and ideas, there are often real jewels of ideas. I imagine reading Barth is a bit like mining diamonds. This time around, I came to appreciate Barth’s footnotes, where he defends his ideas with brilliant exegesis of scripture.
Traditionally, theologians develop their Christology after outlining the inability of humanity to save itself. Barth flips this idea on its head, first writing about the God who journeyed “into the far country.” Barth wants us to realize that grace always comes before sin. We experience this through Jesus Christ, who Barth also goes into depth to show was God. And God comes and lives among us. When they Pharisees condemned Jesus for eating with sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes, they were acknowledging the radicalness of this God who comes to us. Barth builds his theology around Jesus Christ. We must take our focus off our selves (and our pride) and find ourselves connected to a God who comes in a small and insignificant manner. Barth’s ideas continue as he discusses judgment, sin, pride, and the fall. This is a brief explanation of 30-some hours of discussion!
These were seen on my walks around town
Every afternoon, after spending hours talking about Barth, I would take a walk, From the yard signs, you can tell that Decatur is breaking Georgia’s image. Everywhere were signs in support of BLM and civil rights. Even yards that were decorated for Halloween had a message! I also learned that the first ever Waffle House was in the community of Avondale. Now we know who to blame…
Midnight Train to Georgia
Having just driven to Hilton Head, Savannah, then Wilmington, I decided to travel differently. I took the train from Danville, Virginia to Atlanta. This is a section of the route known as the Southern Crescent, which starts in New York and continues to New Orleans. Traveling in a roomette, I boarded the train at 11:20 PM. A waxing moon seemed to hang just outside my window. I fell asleep to the gentle rocking, the faint sound of the engine whistling, and the beeping and flashing lights on the lower guards as we raced through crossings. I woke as the train stopped and looked out the window. We were in Toccoa, Georgia. I had slept through the Carolinas.
Sadly, however, I learned this train no longer has a dining car. It seems that most of the dining cars on the eastern trains have been removed because they were beyond repair. Breakfast was a microwave affair, and like other affairs, was unsatisfying.
Once arriving in Atlanta, I walked almost a mile, over to the midtown Marta Station. I had packed everything into a backpack, so I was able to easily navigate around the streets (which were all closed for a citywide race). At Marta, the Atlanta area light rail, I took the train to Five Points, where I caught the east line out to Avondale. While I could have taken a bus to the seminary, I again walked. I was late for church at Columbia Presbyterian, so I spent much of the afternoon walking around the community.
Eating in the Big City
Piedmont Park
During my week at Columbia, all my big meals of the day were ethnic: Thai (2x), Indian, Korean, Alsace (French), and Vietnamese. On Friday, I met Mike, a friend from Savannah, who was in Atlanta. We spent the afternoon cursing the traffic, walking around Piedmont Park, and eating dinner (Thai), before he dropped me off at the station and headed back south, to home.
Homeward Bound
Danville, VA
Coming back, the train was late. I was exhausted and ready to crawl into bed. But there was a problem with my printed ticket. As they were rushing to load the train, the conductor finally told me to get aboard and go to the lounge car (which was empty at 1 AM). It turned out, the conductor when I came down never scanned my ticket (I assumed he had). Then, the system had cancelled my trip. Thankfully, there was a roomette (but the attendant had to remake the room as it had just become available). But by the time the train arrived in Gainesville, our first stop after Atlanta, I was snuggled up in bed.
I arrived back to the mountains in time to see the leaves at their peak.
