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!