I have read many books in my many years.

When I was young and living at home I read a good bit.
Whenever we traveled I had a book with me. Now, it was not always Dostoyevsky, but it was not always Sports Illustrated either.
In my college days I read for classes in Literature. I read The Classics, both English and American.

Later on I read simply to learn and also for enjoyment. I determined in Graduate School that I would read every afternoon for at least 90 minutes.

When you read a good or great book… you probably remember a great deal about it.

Have you ever gone back and read a great book again?

I have read
LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL three times. It has never meant as much as it meant to me when I was a 20 year old college student wondering what life was going to be like and what it held for me.

At that time, at that age …
that book meant more and spoke to me more than any novel and any book ever had.

Some people would never read a book twice.

How do you feel about reading books in The Bible…??

If you have read The Gospel of JOHN , would you say….
“I have already read that book,
I don’t have to read it again”…???

If you have read PROVERBS….
would you read it again???

I have heard long-time church-goers say …”I have heard that before, I have already read that…. I got that.”

In my mind, that attitude is a limited outlook of an unfathomable opportunity.
There are some books I read with a pen in my hand … because I know there will be memorable phrases.

My copy of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steven Jobs…is
half underlined because of the memorable words and comments of Jobs, Gates, Jonathan Ivie and a few others.

I encourage you to read The Scriptures with a pen in your hand.

There are memorable phrases.

I have read Psalms, Proverbs,
The Gospel of John, James,
Paul’s epistles….
at different times and at different ages in my life.

These books and other Scripture hold current application at whatever time I have read them.

LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL was most applicable and held the most meaning to me when I was on the cusp of adulthood.

Scripture holds applicability and
meaning for each and every moment and stage of life….
because we are consistently on the cusp of eternity.
Novels are written by man’s hand guided by man’s heart and mind about man’s limited experiences.

Scripture was written by man’s hand guided by The Almighty God about God’s Unlimited Plan for and Eternal Role in man’s experiences.

Man’s hand can write about a life and the events contained within that limited existence.

God’s Guidance directed man’s hand to write about Creation, the life of a nation,  Christ’s Walk on the earth, time splitting eternal events, angels doing battle, fulfilled prophecies,
and the unlimited forecast of the eternal life that will be realized by everyone.

If one has any sense of the spiritual
significance of God speaking to man and desiring communion with His created beings…..
then the re-reading of His Word to us should never be shunned because of a previous exercise.
I have not heard my fathers voice in 33 years.

I can remember his words and can read them.

I have reread them.

They hold great meaning because they are his words…but they are not everyday applicable and directive.
I can say that I have already read
LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL…
and that
I don’t need to read that book again.

Scripture speaks to us today as it did to the believers in Corinth, Ephesus and Thessolonica when Paul’s letters were read to them.

Because It is given to the writers by an eternal and omnipresent Spirit…. Scripture holds eternal and ever-current Truth.

In your life,
I hope there is always a need and desire to read that Book again.

 

Do you know the power in your voice?

Do you know the influence in your voice?

My father has been dead since 1983, but if it were that he could call me and speak…I would know and recognize the sound of his voice.

I have an Uncle whose voice is close to being identical to that of my Fathers…..

I recognize the similarity because I knew 

and stilll know 

my Father’s Voice.

Would you not recognize your Mothers voice….no matter the time since you have heard it?

It most likely was the first voice spoken to you and most familiar voice you heard in your first years.

Your children know your voice.
They recognize it when you speak.
They can tell your attitude by the inflection or tone.

The volume of your voice carries meaning as well.
“Raising” ones voice carries meaning and attitude.

Your Spouse can tell many things from the tone, inflection and volume of your voice.

And you know their change in tone, as well.

My father used to tell me that the problem was not necessarily WHAT I said….but the WAY I said it.

Know that your voice, in your house…and in the lives of those in your family….carries great weight.

Therefore, use it properly.

For several weeks, I have started reading aloud the Scripture to my wife when we get into bed at night.

I want her hearing my voice….
the voice of her husband,
reading God’s Word to her as she ends her day.

My desire is that the Assurance and Authority in God’s Word, and the Familiarity and Comfort of her husband’s voice… bless her as she passes into the rest granted her at the closing of the day.

I would believe your wife would benefit from the same thing.

Even if she does not admit initially,
your voice carries great meaning in her heart and in her spirit.

She needs to hear your voice.

It breeds confidence and assurance in her.

Your children need your voice in their ears. For through hearing your voice they gain the centerpiece of authority and assurance in their existence.

Though your audible voice, they will begin to hear and understand God’s usually inaudible voice as He speaks through His Word.

With the Power and Authority in our voice….we need to always be aware of the words we speak.

Our voice, carrying condemning words can cause massive damage.

Our voice, conveying correction,
can instruct and guide with proper authority.

Our voice, with words of blessing,
can cultivate and generate great balance and encouragement in those who hear our words.

The sound of your voice can bring
Peace, Destruction, Assurance or
Encouragement.

It can relieve, it can burden.

It can harm and hurt…..it can uplift and heal.

Understand the power in the sound of your voice.
Know that it has great effect on those closest to you.

Allow it to be governed properly.

Exercise the usage of it properly.

Just as Mary’s head and heart and hopes were lifted when she heard Christ say her name after His Resurrection… outside the tomb…..

your voice,
speaking to those who love you
can lift, love and lead their lives.

Put the power of your voice to good use.

Proactive.
Purposed Instruction.
Intentional Intervention.

Yesterday, I mentioned Mentors in my life and the respect I possess for them.

The active and kinetic movement of a Mentor is what they do to affect change. 

To Mentor is to teach. To Mentor is to coach.

To Mentor is to exhibit the traits taught earlier.
To Mentor is to “lifestyle” the things spoken.
To Mentor is to walk out and example behaviors conducive to success in a given field or activity.

Being a Mentor is not a passive act.

The neophyte needs active and interventionist behavior.

The first Mentor in life is a parent.
If a parent is passive then they have abdicated their role as leader and Mentor.

Bring a Parent/Mentor is the most difficult role because for the 18-25 years you teach and instruct them the one being instructed lives with you.

Therefore, consistency in your message and method is essential.

Preaching a message is a good thing.

Practicing the preached message is where the “rubber meets the road”.

That is a secret for all Mentors…

to consistently model the lessons
being taught.

It says you really believe it.

If you take your pre-school child to
bible school and they learn about Jesus…and you teach them that as well…
and you do not behave as if that message is important… 

the words spoken and the mentoring will be eventually seen as false.

You would be MENTORING a message
without MODELING  the needed behavior.

Mentoring is active ….kenetiic…
always watching the student…
and always being watched by the student.

It’s an everyday thing.

It’s an everyday active verb when it’s being exercised….
only becoming a noun when it’s accomplished.

Who is your “spiritual mentor”?

Not a preacher or a Bible character.

Is there a man or woman who was a spiritual role model to or for you?

Did you try to live like them?
Have you walked by them, learned their ways and grown to reflect them??

They may have taught you in a Class, they may have preached sermons which you heard, or they may have simply lived and modeled a life or lifestyle which showed you how to be more like Christ.

Think of the spiritual models in your life.

Mine are, initially, my Father. 

Then my paternal Grandfather and my Mother.

John J Buell
Harry Piland
Terri Taylor
AT Scott
George Green
Wallace Henley
Bill Venz

At different times and in varying ways, and two of them for just a short time, these people influenced me and modeled for me a spiritual behavior or trait that has greatly influenced or moved me toward What and Who Our Father desires for me to be.

I celebrate those people.

Not one of them is in my life today. 

However, their life and influence, cast and exerted when they walked in and spoke into my  life remains a living and fully functional existence which breathes in me and speaks through me to those I have the opportunity to touch today.

I am thankful for each of them.
Who are yours???

Think of them and celebrate them, express gratitude for them and to them.

Tomorrow……MENTOR, the Verb.

It’s called Investment.

If you do invest,
you deposit money over time and it yields value….maybe quickly, history reveals it always does, eventually.

For many people,
the most important element in their investment program is the proper use of their current income.

Walking away from money…
what is the most important investment you can make?

Time invested in The Scriptures.

What would be next?

If married,
It would be the investment made into the heart, eyes, ears and spirit of your Spouse.

Statements, actions and prayers…
made incrementally into your Spouse creates fertile ground for a great return….and yields the opportunity for great gains.

In every way you can name.

Just as you can place things needed later… on the back burner because they are not urgent…

You can ignore these deposits into your Mate because of “busy-ness” and eventually reach a point where you cannot make up the deficiency.

See your Spouse as you see your retirement account… if no deposits are made and little or no attention paid, there will eventually be no value.

And, if you only make withdrawals…
you will go into default.

No matter the time of life or the “busy-ness” of your current existence… invest in your Spouse on and with purpose….
with your ATTENTION
with your WORDS,
with your TIME…
with your HEART.

Know this…
You make time and you sacrifice for what you consider most valuable.

February, 2017

Follow me.

Sunday, a sixth round draft pick, the
199th player taken in the 2000 NFL
draft played in his seventh Super Bowl.
He has won five.

He has won over 200 NFL games.

More than one win for every player chosen before him in that draft.

He was MVP for the fourth time in the most intense sporting event in American sports.

He did not receive a plethora of offers out of high school.
The main way he attracted attention from college recruiters was from a highlight video his father made and sent out to 54 schools.

This year, maybe his best year, while he trained and prepared…
his efforts have been effected by knowing his mother has been undergoing chemotherapy and fighting a great battle herself.

Emotion has added additional fuel to Tom Brady’s fire.

Follow me.

In 1958,
Johnny and The Moondogs changed their name.
After playing in a cellar at lunchtime dates, they traveled to Germany to play. Upon hearing their single,
“My Bonnie” and realizing they were not a German band their new agent brought them back to Britain.

After going through two drummers and another couple of other guitarists, they settled on a name and The Beatles became popular in England before conquering America in February, 1964.

No band….NO BAND… has ever had the initial impact or lasting influence as they have had over the past 50 years.

Follow me, please.

Six NBA titles.
Six Finals MVPs.
5 seasonal MVPs.
10 time scoring champion.
The universally accepted position as the G. O. A. T.
The first athlete to achieve billionaire financial status.
The first athlete to be given a brand and legitimate equity in a sneaker company and propel the sneaker industry into financial legitimacy.

He was cut from his high school basketball varsity as a sophomore.

His father was murdered in a car at a roadside rest stop..

He was labeled a ball hog and a team killer in his early professional career.

His rivals teamed up to frustrate any progress toward a title for the first six years of his professional life.

The JORDAN RULES was the effort to knock him down and blanket him on the court.
Those RULES eventually drove him to the weight room, an everyday training regime …. and unmatched, successful fury.
These are three examples of undeniable GREATNESS.

These are examples that reveal there is always a backstory to Greatness.

Those successes that appear to come easy… as it did for Michael Jordan…as it does for Tom Brady… as it seemed for The Beatles…
only appear that way.

Things are not always as they appear.

Hard to equal “hard work” has been
exercised by these three examples.

Malcolm Gladwell says we become great at something after doing it 10, 000 times.

That might be right.

Ask Brady.
Ask MJ.

Ask the ones who have learned from them.
Kobe Bryant, a disciple of Jordan’s,
ended his career with 5 titles and is the 3rd all-time leading scorer, passing Jordan.
He was known for having the best fundamentals and most efficient footwork in the NBA.

He was also known as the player who out worked everyone else. … for twenty years.

Research Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Glenn Cunningham, Billy Graham.

There is always a backstory to greatness.

If you have achieved an accelerated level of success …
you have a backstory.

My encouragement is to be open to sharing it.

Frustration will grow in those around you who try to emulate your results if they do not understand the effort, sacrifice, and dedicated work which you engaged in to arrive at the point of success you now enjoying.

Share your backstory.

Because of that pyramid of work and extended effort you built… pride should not keep you from
allowing those following you to hear and learn that you did not sail easily to this point.

Easy sailing may occur now…
it never would have if not for your
earlier dedication and commitment.

And it will not last for long,
if you fail to continue that exercise of effort you built your success on.

Brady is probably beginning his workout regime tomorrow…
for next season.
I bet he is ALREADY into it.

If you are young and just beginning…
you might not develop patience if you are continually hungry for success… but know that a backstory takes time to develop.

Do not think with the initial taste of
success that it is accomplished.

None of these examples were satisfied with one title, one victory, one gold record, or one award…
that one accomplishment made them want more.

It’s why Saban has a 24 hour rule.
Enjoy this victory
or hurt in this loss….
for 24 hours.

Then begin the work again.

Brady woke up early this morning thinking ahead.
He is working on his next title …
by working diligently on the body gifted to him and on the developed craft that got him to that very visible stage he stood on last Sunday night.

He will most likely be there again.

His backstory will get him there.

In the second chapter of John,
the Author describes Jesus, very early in His Three Year ministry, physically wrecking the commerce going on in the Temple.

In the other Gospels this same event is referred to again…. seemingly in the last week of His
before His Crucifixion.

If it was one event described several times, or if it occurred more than once…….it took place.

It sets a precedent for His followers.

Is there anything going on where you worship which needs to be physically confronted and shut down???

If so, then have the spiritual and physical courage to do so.

I did it once…
after someone complained about not getting anything out of the sermons being preached.

The gentleman left the Church.

I know of someone who did this …
and his actions brought great influence upon a decision-maker and allowed an alternative and better solution than what was going to take place.

Be careful when you consider this and surround your behavior in prayer…because you are subjecting yourself to The Highest Authority when you get into possibly being the vocal element in Gods’ work.

What about the “temple” of your home???
Where you live.

Anything disruptive or simmering just under the surface that is causing you or others in your house to be less than what your Spirit is telling you to or leading you be ?

Is there any activity in your house that if Christ walked in he would take a whip to…???

Are you sure?

As a parent you have the right and
responsibility to check, often,
your children’s phones…
make that the phones YOU pay for and let them use.

As the adult in the house…
and as the “priest of the home”,
you are supposed to lead, example and hold accountable any behavior under your roof.

You are also challenged to be aware…to investigate, as a Physician does when looking for the root of an illness… anything drawing your spouse or a child away from you or the family unit.

Couching it as…
“they are just being teenagers” …
is abdicating your role as the Adult, as the Parent,
as the One who has the responsibility.
What about the last and hardest “temple” to cleanse ?

The Church where you worship is one responsibility.
The home you live in and the family you have given rise to is another absolutely important and essential responsibility.

The hardest ” temple” to cleanse is, and always will be,
the “temple” your MIND and HEART reside in.

It’s the most private.

It’s the easiest one to rationalize.

I heard this phrase from
Larry Taunton…
” to rationalize is to ‘rational lies’ “.

Jesus could have walked into the Temple… spoke with a calm and quiet voice and asked everyone to shut the commerce down and move their tables outside.

That might have been the rational or polite thing.

He did not act with courtesy or politeness.
He was angry and carried out a little wrath.

His behavior was an example of
the phrase…
“be ye angry and sin not”.

Treat with the outmost honor and
accountability the “Temple” you govern the most …..and do not tolerate any thought, behavior, imagination or outside influence to prostitute the purity of this most important  “temple”.

It’s why Jesus acted out of anger and wrath.

He took the sanctity of the His Temple most seriously.

Look at your “temple” in the way.

It’s where we are told by Jesus Himself…. that He resides within us.

It’s where you originate any worship you engage in.

Any and all worship begins in your “inner temple” before you physically enter one of concrete and steel.

It’s the “temple” where more worship and praise occur than any made by human hands.

What is being worshipped and praised in your ” temple”??

Is it something Christ would take a whip to??

Being honest…
we have all abused the sanctity of our ” inner temple” at some point in our lives.

Being honest…
Christ desires that we allow Him
continual access to this most difficult “temple” to keep holy.

As he may have cleansed the Jerusalem Temple more than once… He can,
will,
and desires
to “cleanse” this ” temple” when we open the doors to Him.

But unlike most public Temples where the doors are easily accessible …..
the door to this “inner temple” that you own…has its handles on the inside of the door only to be opened from within.

He will knock…
but, He can only enter
and do the work that only He can do…..if you let him in.

It is incumbent that you allow Him entrance.

How many things in life appear to be one thing….but are really not?

When you were young you may have had a fear of the dark.
As you grew older you came to understand that there was nothing different from what you saw in the daytime…
but for the absence of light.

Most track and field aficionados in the early Fifties felt that the human body could not allow an athlete to run a mile in under four minutes.

Until 1972, women were not allowed to compete in the Marathon at any Olympic Meet. Officials thought the long exhausting event was too strenuous for the female body.

After being introduced by
David Thompson, in his Hall of Fame induction speech, Michael Jordan made a comment, in what was mostly an edgy and competitive speech….  

“Never say never…limits, like fears, are often just an illusion”.

As soon as he said that I had to write it down.

Like many Scriptural verses, which I have read,
like several of Tolkien’s words that he had Gandalf speak, like about half of what William Buckley has written, and like so many C.S.Lewis phrases my eyes have scanned.

I knew Michael’s was a comment I had to transcribe and commit to memory.
“Limits, like fears, are often just an illusion.”
Read that again and consider it for a moment.

I do not believe Michael was attempting to channel
Tony Robbins…
but, that is a incredibly motivating sentence.

Before the committed effort by the United States government to land a man on the moon, space travel was a science fiction fantasy.

When I was a boy….
a comic book character named Dick Tracy had a phone on his wrist. 

Multiple times in the development of the three i-products he brought to the public, Steve Jobs had to drive his Apple team to the edge because they would tell him they could not get something done or complete it by his deadline.

So many “limits” are self-imposed.

Steve Jobs drove them to distraction, but his drive made them push through their “limitations”,  and now the world is different because of the very device I am writing on, and you are reading on at this moment.

A great many limits, and done fears are imposed on us by parents, friends…who are attempting to be thoughtful and considerate because they want to protect us from failure.

In 1985,
when I told my Mother I was leaving the teaching profession to enter the financial business….and mentioned the monetary possibilities… she said,
“you don’t want to do that !”

She thought, at the time,
making more money might make me different.

She was fearful it would lead me toward negative consequences.

It presented me so many positive opportunities …
and she came to see that.

Those same parents put you on a bicycle, maybe with training wheels first….then they removed them…and pushed us down the sidewalk as we wobbled and eventually gained our balance.

We broke through that limitation and maybe the fear of falling.

Push against that envelope.

So many barriers can be overcome by commitment, perseverance and time.

In the television series….
“The Men Who Built America”…
Vanderbilt, Morgan, Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford dealt with extreme limitations and roadblocks and the fears of a slow moving society, to achieve great fame and fortune while constructing the infrastructure of what would become the greatest nation and economy in the history of the world.

Are you allowing yourself to be hemmed in by a self-imposed barrier, fear or limitation?

Did you give your best effort last year?

Many people have mental
“audio tapes” from the past that they hear over and over.
Those old “eight tracks” have played too long.

Erase and Replace those confining commentaries with a new vision of potential and possibilities.

Examine the fearful or limiting illusion in front of you and your progress…… 

and either remove it, see through it, or destroy it with your commitment and perseverance.

Limits are barriers meant to be broken through.

Fears are confinement’s to be overcome.

It’s how progress is achieved.

The dark is nothing but for the absence of Light.

Get a flashlight.

The mile is no longer has a four minute barrier.

On Christmas afternoon I thought this through     but wrote nothing down.

The Grand War of Aggression was declared and the initial “shot across the bow” was levied on the day we celebrate with gifts and mirth. A day in which we remember and hopefully elevate the central figure in the Aggression.

He has most times been portrayed and pictured as a mild person, with a probable soft nature. The world has framed Him as almost effeminate. He possessed carpenters hands yet the world has painted Him to have a grandmotherly nature. Most movies have shown Him as one one who could be run over easily.

Yet He is not.

He is none of what the preceding  paragraph refers to.

He came not to attack you. 

He came to attack no one and no thing He had a hand in creating.

He came to wage a War of Aggression against the one who wages aggression and destruction against those who have been given life and breath and blood by His Hand.

When you read of Him you read His Words of Peace, Love, Forgiveness, Optimism, Opportunity and Joy. His Words to His Creatiion are intended to breed those traits and lead them to live as He lived.

And lives.
Understand this though, He is a warrior Who came  to destroy completely the the one who rose against  Him, the one who tempted Him and who tempts you.
He came on the day we celebrate to bless and encourage the created ones but to “draw and quarter”  the one who seeks our destruction.

In Rome, every statue of Saint Peter has  a set of keys in his hand. Every statue of the Apostle Paul  has him grasping a sword.

What did Paul write that the “sword”  represented?

He wrote, “The Sword of The Spirit which is The Word of God”.

In John 1:1, he also wrote,…..”In the beginning was The Word and The Word was with God…and The Word was God”.

“The Word” Paul writes of is Jesus.

Jesus is the SWORD.

He came as a SWORD to cut the heart and life out of and away from our common enemy and to embarrass, defeat and expel the foe from the place made for us and damn the foe and His like to the darkness and despair made for them.

If you think He came to speak nice and peaceful words….He did speak prolific and life-inspiring words.

But, know this, as you breath the air He made and allows you to take into the lungs He created for and placed within you…

He is The Weapon of Aggression 

He is The Weapon which the enemy fears.

He is The Weapon we must wield.

His Purpose was and is to empower us, His soldiers, and to lead and example the way to wage Aggression against the Foe.
And He means to wage Aggressive War.

He did when He was tempted.

He did when He was laid in a tomb.

His death was strategic to trap His enemy and His Resurrection was the defeat that signaled the War would soon be over.

Similar to the game last Monday night…..the winning team struck the death blow … yet one second remained on the clock. It was a short delay of the inevitable.

We are walking in that short delay.

We are to be trained soldiers continuing the Aggression.

Walk in the Words and Strength of Example He gave and gives us.

Wield the SWORD.

Wage the Aggression.

Always came down the alley to get there. 

The street in front of 813 was a bit busy, as it was a main road in Woodlawn.

Up the five or six steps to a small landing and in the backdoor.
A wide dog trod hallway went through the middle until a wall went up next to the main bedroom.

One of my earliest memories is running down the front steps, falling and busting open my bottom lip.

The scar is there still.

Old gas space heaters sat on the floor in each room. I can remember standing in front to get warm as I listened to the adults speak.

The high ceilings prevented it from ever getting really warm.

An egg-shaped empire table sat in the entrance hallway. I remember it as the telephone table as I grew up.

That same table sits in my house today….

it carries a great deal of character and if it could speak it would tell tales.

East about five miles was 7721.

Five large oak trees lined the front of the yard by the street.
The lot was about 50% larger than the others on the block, sitting on the corner.

The large front porch was the center of activity whenever the family gathered.

My grandfather would sit in his rocker, beat all my uncles at checkers…and then tell the grandchildren he would give them a chance. 

We thought we had one because he would play left-handed.

The phone was a “party line”.

If you are over 55 you understand that phrase.

My grandmother was forever cooking. 

She gave of herself to so many people. I lived with her as I finished college, after my grandfather passed away. She had never paid a bill nor written a check.

Many times she looked lost when I would help her pay the bills.

She was the most giving woman I have known, outside my wife.

When she was 80….I had to tell my mother that her mother was beginning to see and imagine things. She told me one evening that “the kids” we’re coming to dinner. She had cooked a meal for 8 people. 

I was the only other family member in town.

We sat there and I saw the confusion rise in her eyes as no one came and it got to be 8pm.

When I was 8, I stayed there, at 7721, one summer and would bounce a rubber ball off the high side of the house to catch flyballs…. 

many years later when my youngest brother did the same thing I realized how loud and annoying it was.

They never told me to stop.

When I was young I wanted to buy that house. I still drive by it once a year or so.

My grandfather sat outside with me
that Summer, next to his grape arbor, and told me about his life.

There was no air conditioning.
I never remember it being oppressively hot.
There was a large window fan and with the windows cracked a bit…it cooled the whole house.

These spaces hold memories that fashion my thoughts and life. 

In traditional Southern Literature…

place, holds great meaning and affectation.

These places do.

At 813, death came to my fathers mother when I was eight months old. 

It was hard and drawn out and caused all of my uncles and aunts great pain and hurt. I 

I heard, once in a while, about the pain he felt during that time from my father.

He carried a sense of guilt and insufficiency because he could do nothing to ease his mothers pain.

It affected him the remainder of his life. 

It has affected all of them.

Out of the pain and loss in that house came lessons that have given rise to accomplished athletes, teachers, principals, ministers, coaches, leaders, successful businessmen, authors, decorated military officers….

and a family and families that are glued together by the love and character which developed within those wooden walls.

At 7721, there seemed to always be laughter and fun. Playing games, seeing my family members dress up, be loud and embarrass my grandmother. There was no alcohol, but plenty of outrageous laughter and behavior.

There was love and learning there, at 7721…..

but not with the lessons of 813.

There was laughter, but always a lesson…at 813.

Once, my father and I were sitting at another large empire table in the dining room with the ever present sugar bowl my grandfather always kept full. 

My grandfather was sitting there also.

I stood to warm myself in front of the space heater as my father said something rather direct to me. 

My grandfather spoke to him and said….”Don’t talk to my grandson that way”.

My father replied…
” Daddy, he is my son”

To which my grandfather answered,

” Yes….and you are still mine.”

I said not a word.

These spaces and places taught me who I was and where I arose from.

Any character I possess today has grown out of the balance between these two houses.

These two houses were about five miles apart but in the mid-twentieth century they were not easily accessible to each other.

No young person had a car.

The “right to drive my car at 16” had not become a teenage prerequisite…..

therefore my parents wrote long and involved letters to each other from those houses, when they were in school and dating.

I read them after my mother died.

Their writing was full of longing and hope.

The letters were in today’s terms, mushy and romantic to the hilt.

Because everything was not at their fingertips…….they had to stretch themselves and reach out toward their hoped-for future.

They did not talk on the telephone, they were not easily accessible to each other.

Because it was not easy to be together, they built their romance on the pillars of dreams and longing …things did not come easy then.

Things DID NOT come easy then.

Delayed gratification developed a committed relationship.

Commitment was slowly grown out of longing and hope and it forged a relationship that was solid…

their every whim was never answered early. 

It had to develop.

These people and places are mine.

Everyone has them…if you can remember.

I urge you to recall and remember. 

They will better help you define and understand who you are.

Because of these earlier places my life occupied at times….I trust the place  I now live in is the better for it.

The lessons from these other places make my life what it is today.

I trust that I can contribute to someone an ounce of what was given earlier to me from the people in those places.