AND THEN AUTUMN ARRIVED

AUTUMN LEAVES

And then autumn arrived.

The season of letting go.

Not every leaf that falls is a tragedy. 

Some things have to fall away for us to finally see the sky.

And that revelation gives us hope for a new beginning.

 

MY BIG BANK SENIOR ADVENTURE

DEBIT CARD READER

I recently received a paper refund check in the mail which I haven’t encountered in a coon’s age.  So, since I was ready for a break anyway, I decided to drive a short way to my local branch bank that I haven’t visited in a coon’s age.  As I entered the bank, I was surprised to see I was the only one needing a bank teller who just happened to be a very stoic young lady.  

I placed my paper check and Debit card under her bullet proof glass as usual and she immediately returned my card with the instruction to insert it in the card reader that was now outside for customer self-serve.  I did that and before the next message appeared, she instructed me to enter my password.  I did that and the device started imploring me to Remove Card, Remove Card!  So, I turned to my bank Yoda and pleasantly asked her if that was my last instruction and should I remove my card?  

I finally broke through, she burst out with a big smile and we consummated the transaction!

 

AMERICAN MASS SHOOTINGS

 

POLICE LINE TAPE, TIBETAN PRAYER FLAGS

“When you pray, move your feet.”  — African proverb

I served on our church Trustees group in 2012 when the horrendous mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School took the lives of 20 children and 6 adult staff members.  Many people across the country were offering their thoughts and prayers.  That tragic event of 13 years ago prompted us to initiate a variety of security measures that are needed today more than ever. 

I’ve noticed that more folks are recently challenging remarks by others during troubled times when they remark “Our thoughts and prayers are with you.”  They cry for that plus action!  That phrase has almost become cliché in our culture and folks are noticing.  The recent rampage of Hurricane Helene and the resultant response demonstrated that prayers and action go well together! 

The mayor of Minneapolis, where a gunman opened fire at a Catholic church and school 13 years later, killing at least two children and injuring 17 others during morning Mass, mostly children, said "thoughts and prayers" were not a sufficient response to the mass shooting.  He noted the kids were literally praying at the time.  He’s right, more action is needed in the area of security, military style weapons and mental health.  Most all but one of similar mass shootings lately have involved young men.

The Tibetan prayer flag above states that “Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others.”  Offering “thoughts and prayers” is surely a wonderful thought, but when those words are all that is offered without some positive action to attempt to right the wrong, those words become cliché and merely platitudes.  Hopefully, the prayers will inspire us to action!  

Karl Barth was right when he observed: “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”  This troubled world, including the Holy Land and our schools, is definitely worthy of our prayers and our actions!  The floods that have ravaged our state recently remind us of our strength.

“We may bend but we never break.”  When the night is dark, be the star that ushers us home.

 

 

PAYNE AND LARRY, Pinehurst, NC

I watched Paul Azinger receive the Payne Stewart Award last night and was very touched by his acceptance speech ( https://youtu.be/l5d91wo7qLM?si=Ye_w3h_33QJ_32XS ).

It's worth the watch as they were very good friends in the PGA and Payne was there when Azinger fought and beat cancer in the prime of his career.  Then it was Azinger who was supportive when the charter jet with Payne and five others (including two of Azinger's managers) infamously lost pressure and flew on auto pilot until it crashed, as the entire country was horrified in 1999. 

I relate to both of these players as I had the honor to present the winner's check at Tom Watson's charity tournament in KC to Azinger and Couples.  Trevino paired with Tom.  Payne was a Missouri boy followed by the local news and his memory lives on at Pinehurst.

Congratulations Zinger and RIP Payne

KEEPING LIFE IN BALANCE

 

Scottie, 2025 Open Champion

As a graduate Industrial Engineer, I consumed most of my early career optimizing the time and cost of a product or process.  This is a discipline whose mantra states that “time is money”. Consuming a working life around this mantra was in opposite conflict with the need to balance my time with other priorities.

I’ve since learned that the opposite point of view is adhering to a mantra that “time is life”. And "time is love". To live a balanced life, we need to be conscious of the time we clock on our job life, our family/relational life, and our spiritual life in order to have a full and satisfying life. It’s important to take inventory of where we spend our time; for where we spend our time is where our heart resides.

We need to pause life occasionally and shake ourselves awake to the reality of time and its precious availability to us all, so that we can live it to the fullest. Each of us is born with a variable number of grains of sand in our hourglass. And the hourglass is always in motion until the last grain is spent.

The Texas golfer, Scottie Scheffler, just won The Open Championship in Ireland, but his pregame presser caught not only my attention but much of the world.  In short, he stated that “This is not a fulfilling life.  It’s fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment, but it’s not fulfilling from a sense of the deepest places of your heart.”  I’ve previously written that not every available job provides both a good income and ideal life satisfaction, but it can provide the money to acquire meaning in the other two areas if we look for the life balance. 

He noted that golf doesn’t define him as a person and that if it interferes too much with his family life it will be “the last day that I play out here for a living.” That’s also good advice for someone planning to retire soon. I’ve often noted that finding satisfaction in things of this life lasts about as long as it takes to remove the price tags and then we move on to the next thing.  His reply on winning the Open was “It’s going to be an awesome two minutes.  Then we're going to get to the next week.” 

Scheffler summarized his state of mind before the final round of golf’s prime major as “I’ve been called to come out here, do my best to compete, and glorify God.  That’s pretty much it.”  That all shows me that he’s doing a good job of “keeping life in balance”.

THE GIFT OF GARDENING

BACKYARD GARDEN, JAMESTOWN, NC

“The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a gardener is in the touching.  The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”

 ~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 

I recently had three trees removed from my backyard to allow more sunlight to enter and facilitate a healthy environment.  As it turns out, a brighter spot on the edge of the grass now receives a nice dose of sunlight to stimulate both the grass and a new garden of flowering plants.  So, I’ve had the pleasure over the springtime to add a little more interest to the small piece of our planet that I’ve been entrusted to oversee. 

 I also do the lawn cutting around the little space that I maintain and will relinquish one day.  But hopefully, my springtime gardening project will also add a sense of solitude and joy to some fellow sojourner as it has to me.

 

 

HEARTBEATS

Sunrise Walk, Kiawah Island, SC

I’ve experienced a variety of situations out in nature at sunrise when darkness is being driven out by the emerging light of another creation day.  All of those dawns evoked a warm sense of peacefulness.  

Walking an ocean beach at sunrise with the rhythmic sound of waves breaking on shore certainly qualifies.  It’s been said that music is the language of God.  And that rhythm is the dance of the music.  I like to think that this association stems from deep seated memories of our first nine months of life in our mother’s womb, surrounded by amniotic fluid and the peaceful, rhythmic sound of her loving heartbeat.

 

REFLECTIONS ON LIFE LESSONS

Road of Life, Jamestown, NC

I've got more days behind me than ahead of me,

so I plan to choose wisely and make the most of them.

It matters not how long we stay,

But that we learned love is at the very core of our existence.

Being in relationship with our creator and fellow sojourners,

Is necessary for us to travel throughout our assigned age.

Never lose the opportunity to learn and grow,

And life will remain forever enlightening.

Our senses of sight and sound can only detect a small spectrum,

But that may just be in our best interest of actual physical reality.

The greatest loss in life is not death,

but what dies inside while still living.

Courage does not always scream and shout,

But whispers I’m still alive and I’ll try again.

Besides, what’s considered the worst thing,

is not the last thing.

 

COKE PERSPECTIVE

COKE PERSPECTIVE, Summerfield, NC

 If you’re sitting around waiting on the world to entertain you, you’d better pack a lunch! I learned a long time ago during those long, hot, summer vacation school days that I needed to find something to love and learn do it as good as possible until I discovered something else to put in my tool kit. Learning something new like photography even if you don’t master it is a lifetime pursuit. Just make sure that it’s constructive, e.g., “rioting” never scores points on a resume. Neither does hacking a stranger’s Facebook account!

YEI-BE-CHAI

Spider Weaving, Jamestown, NC

 The Navajo believed that Spider Woman initially taught their ancestors how to weave their symbolic and spiritual rugs. And that makes perfect sense if you have ever watched a spider painstakingly weave each strand of an intricate web into a beautiful work of art, like the one I captured in the yard.

Karen and I debated buying a YEI-BE-CHAI rug in the Navajo Four Corners area years ago, but we were concerned about what we perceived as a flaw in one corner. Later we discovered it was a spirit line meant to allow a portion of the weaver’s soul to be released which had been woven into the art form—a beautiful belief.

DON'T BLINK

Hope of  Rebirth, Jamestown, NC

Kenny Chesney has a great country song titled “Don’t Blink” about the fleeting passage of time, e.g., you go to sleep one day and you wake up married to your childhood sweetheart!  Of course, time does seem to fly by faster when we’re enjoying ourselves instead of burning daylight in distasteful activities like going to the dentist.  If you Google “fleeting time” you’ll find many quotes on the subject.  And those observations cast a wide net over time and humanity.  You have to believe that every human being that ever drew a breath on this planet has easily experienced fleeting time, especially since modern man invented the clock.  But even earlier in time man watched the years, seasons and days slip by without ceasing. 

Only our creator has been recognized as being timeless, while we mortal beings with frontal lobes in our brains understand that our beginnings have endings that arrive all too soon.  Our pets wake up each morning living constantly in the present moment without the concern for endings.  We could all take that lesson from them, understanding that mortal life does have a stop date, but Jesus has left us with the promise to be with us always and he has prepared a forever spiritual life for us after this mortal life.

All of the miraculous wonders of another spring season burst into our lives every year to remind us of the hope for a meaningful life and the hope of rebirth available to all creation, because of the cross and resurrection that occurred one spring season over two thousand years ago.

We need to make peace with the passing of time and embrace each waking moment we have without knowing exactly how much sand is left in the hourglass.  I do recognize that I have more days behind me than I have ahead of me.  Using our time wisely and intentionally also includes wasting some of it to recharge and refresh.  If we can learn from the past and plan for the future, our present moments can be filled with gratitude, fearless hope, healthy relationships and new possibilities.  

So, don’t blink!  And we will rest in peace.

MOON OVER JAMESTOWN

 

MOON OVER JAMESTOWN, NC

“The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light,

just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning.

Light within light...It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul,

the singular light within that great general light of existence.”

~Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LONELINESS AND SOLITUDE

SUNRISE SOLITUDE, Kiawah, SC

I lived alone for a short time after I graduated from college and started my first real job at Hercules.  Karen and I were married not too long after that when she graduated.  We were together for 44 years until cancer took her life almost 17 years ago.  I was in the process of adjusting to living alone once again and walking into a restaurant where the hostess asked “How many?”, answering “one please”, and getting an unwelcome response of “Oh, Just One?”   And then I walked into a small restaurant for a late lunch in Blowing Rock where I was photographing the fall colors.  The owner approached me and asked the usual “How many?”  But then she surprised me when I responded “One Please” and she replied “Oh, then you’ll be in good company!”  I left a generous tip that day, not for the service or food which was excellent, but the life lesson from a woman who knew the difference between loneliness and solitude.  

About one fourth of the nation’s people live alone.  With the exception of a catastrophic accident, most all couples will face the prospect of living alone after one departs.  Even those who live with a partner experience time alone together.  I’ve observed couples dining out that make it through an entire meal without being in conversation.  People can be alone in a crowd.  People attending events such as a church service who arrive, go directly to their chosen pew, and then exit to the parking lot, practice “getting together alone”.  And how often do we see images of teenagers and now older folks out in public and alone together staring at their cell phones?

There are many positive values to the concept of solitude, however.  Paul Tillich writes that “Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone”.  The frenzied mother of four small children certainly understands the glory of some alone time.  Solitude is pleasant; loneliness not so much.  Solitude is good medicine for recharging and reflection!  Jesus often went away to be in solitude to pray and escape the demanding crowds. 

Finally, loneliness can be offset by learning our way around it and focusing on liking the person you have spent your entire life with in both good times and bad.  All people need a support network and social connections, like joining a breakfast club!  We were created in God’s image as relational beings after all!  And our creator has gone on record, as committing to be with us always.  So, we’re never really alone!   But of course, relationship is a two-way street.  We have to take time out to nurture that relationship and open up to the joys and concerns of our life.  We have to make a habit of talking and listening or we’ll simply coexist alone together.

No troubling emotion can resist grace forever,

especially the grace of God promising to be with us forever!     

 

COMPARISONS

COMPARISONS

There are things I did, thoughts I believed, ways I voted, etc. years ago that I do not subscribe to the way I live today.  So please don’t compare me or yourself for who we were then, but the person we are today.  Comparisons are the thief of joy.  Life is all about perspective.

If you live in the United States of America with all its faults and warts, you may easily become a victim of comparisons without appreciating how good life can be here.  The U.S. economy has the world’s largest Gross Domestic Product.  New York’s economy is as big as Canada and Texas’ is as big as Italy. 

You may think you have a boring life compared to your neighbor, but there are world citizens praying for such a life, where every day is a struggle for survival.  Our basic problem seems to revolve around appreciating what we have and becoming more of a citizen of the world by finding out how others live and helping them, rather than comparing our lot in life by others in our country.  We’re living better than the majority of the world’s population.  We freak out when the power is interrupted by a storm for a few hours, oblivious to the circumstances of millions that live without utilities every day.  We take too much for granted, since most folks around us have them.

We’re forever complaining about our lack of athletic abilities compared to the pros that were born gifted and practice incessantly every day to hone those skills.  We compare our height, weight, looks, talents, etc. to extraordinary people who represent a minutia of the world’s population, but are constantly on all sorts of social media, leaving us with the impression that these types are everywhere and we got the short end of the stick.

The only comparison we need to worry about is being a better person than we were yesterday.  And help make the world a better place, one person at a time.  Let it begin with me.

MEMORY DOORWAYS

DOORWAYS, Jamestown, NC

Most all of us humanoids have experienced the baffling experience of having some specific chore on our minds as we walk into a room, are distracted by a phone call while on our iPads, driving without the guidance of electronic devices, etc. and we suddenly lose track of our intentions.  Based on a recent article on the subject, it seems as though our brain has been creating mental bookmarks called event boundaries, dividing our day into distinct before-and-after sections for easier recall.  For example, as we move from room to room through our doorways, our brain perceives a change in environment, triggering a change in boundaries.  Things usually go as planned unless we become distracted.   

For example, we may be on a mission to Google a question when we are interrupted by a call.  When we finish the call, we can no longer recall what we were searching for on the Internet.  Or we have every intention to walk into the study for a ball point pen when we are distracted by noticing a stack of papers that need our immediate attention.  In all these cases, the brain has been distracted by the sensations we perceive as we enter any new event boundary, losing the memory that sent us there in the first place.

Once the memory is out of reach, the only recourse might be to retrace our steps to the beginning of our quest on the iPad or in the room whose doorway exit caused us to lose our initial objective.  Or we could simply focus on not being distracted before we achieve our initial objective!