Insights From The Rocking Chair

If you are on Facebook, you may have noticed some of your friends doing a 30 days of Thanksgiving countdown. Quite simply, you give one thing per day that you are thankful for. This not a bad idea because we so often forget to thank God for the blessings we have. And blessed we are. I know that many folk are going through some of the roughest times in their lives at this time. I have two friends that lost their husbands, in their 50's, this year and I have ached for them. This time of year seems to make it more difficult to deal with that loss. I don't know about you, but, I find it hard sometimes to think about what I could be thankful for. We have a tradition at my mother-in-laws as we sit at the table, we each give thanks for something before the blessing and the eventual destruction of the bounty in front of us. The difficulty of thankfulness shows at that time. Everyone of us has had the situation of just saying, "I am thankful for my family". There is nothing ...

Home at last! Yes he is. His physical body is not yet sitting in his physical house but he is on Mississippi soil and Sonia is spending time with him as he and his fellow soldiers are processing out. It has been a long year. We thank our great on wonderful God for all he has supplied during this last year. First and foremost his safety and the safety of his unit. Although the news doesn't report much from there anymore, his deployment was not uneventful, but all are safe and returning. Thank you 1-185th Aviation Battalion for your service to your country. Because of your efforts we are safer.

Well, we are almost there! SNL will be on Mississippi soil in a day or two. I cannot begin to tell you how excited, elated, overjoyed, and as my daughter put it "getting butterflies" we are to have him almost here. This little blog post is to have you to continue to pray for him, and the men he has served with this last year. Some are coming home to families falling apart and some to spouses diagnosed with life challenging diseases. All of them will have to re-integrate into society again. Their families will have to adjust along side of them as well, when husband and daddy returns. Although I am primarily concerned with him and his group, the war in Iraq is winding down and many will be coming home to the same situations. Multiple deployments have taken a toll on the family structure that our great nation is built around and as that crumbles so does the very being of who we are. Specifically pray for patience (on everyone's part), for peace in their spirits, and fo...

  I have been reading lately on worship and the relevance of our churches. This is not deep but I just thought I would re-post. I have found that the older I get the more reflective I become. I am not quite sure if that is normal, but that is me nonetheless. This morning I woke up thinking about some of the places I have had the privilege to live. Until I married, all them but one were in the country ( outside city limits for you city folk). Maybe some of you have heard your parents or at least your grandparents talk about the simpler way of life or the good old days. Growing up in the country is just that type of living. In those days there were many things you didn't have in your community. You didn't have drug problems unless of course you count smoking rabbit tobacco as a drug. It didn't alter you mind but it would burn your insides because it wasn't a processed product but right off the stalk. We didn't roll in paper but made our own corncob pipes from, yo...

Intolerant, an adjective, to be unable or unwilling to endure. The first time I remember hearing the word was in the verb form, tolerate. I was in the sixth grade. My “homeroom” teacher was the principle of the elementary school. He would always say “I will not tolerate…..”, or “your… will not be tolerated, that would be some misbehavior on someone’s part. Out came the dictionary so that I would know what in the world he was talking about.That was a big word then. Today, the word has become a brand to describe everyone who disagrees with your particular social or political agenda. It is used to beat you down and make you cower as soon as the word is tossed into the air. You are to tremble in fear if you are labeled as intolerant. It is used to degrade your opinion or knowledge and is an effort to make them irrelevant. As a Christian, I have learned that we should be intolerant of sin. I have also learned that sin wants to be tolerated. Truth shows sin as it is. Sin seeks to...

Today my oldest grandson registered for the first grade. This is a huge deal. Kindergarten was big but this is really big. I remember my first day, uh hum, 50 years ago. It was at Main Street Elementary school in Yazoo City Mississippi. I don't remember my teachers name because we moved during the Christmas break to a new town. What I do remember about that first semester, was my attempted escape from the school. I don't remember the circumstances but I remember getting to the outside door before I was captured and returned to my cell.... classroom. We moved to Clarksdale, MS where I again enrolled in my first day in the first grade. My teacher there was Mrs. Jones. She was a great teacher and I can remember her well. Many years later I met her daughter who was attending Mississippi College. It was in Mrs. Jones class that I met a boy that joined up a day after me. We instantly became inseparable friends for the next three years. That is when we moved again. I wish I coul...

For some today is just another day to celebrate a holiday. For others, it is remembering those family members who went to other shores to secure the freedoms we for now, still hold. For yet still others it is a day of praying that our loved ones in foreign lands taking the fight to those who wish to impose their will on us will remain safe from harm. On this day, we spout our platitudes on freedom and what it means, but yet many have taken those freedoms for granted for so long they mean nothing to them. It will be easy for them to fall for the trappings or appearances of something that "could" be better. Oh, wait, this country just did that. We liked the words of "Hope and Change" but didn't really look at what that might mean. What it has meant, at least to this Southern Boy, is the eroding of our basic freedoms. All the quips and slogans that have been spoken and posted on Facebook sound good and may make some feel better, but the reality is most have not...

Day 4 our last day in NYC started somewhat lazily. I am not ashamed to say that we were tired. We had covered miles and miles of asphalt, but it was a good tired because we were having the time of our life. Our first stop of course involved food. We ate a good breakfast at the little cafe we found a couple of days before then we went down to time square to stand in line to get discounted tickets to a Broadway show,"Jersey Boys". More about that later. After buying the tickets, we caught the subway down to Canal (aka China Town). We spent a couple of hours bargain hunting. It was fun "Jewing" down the prices on some items that we brought back. This is a real NYC Chinese fish market Then on to "Little Italy". Italian resturants on both sides of the street for about 3 blocks. These were real Italian eateries. Linen table cloths, the works. Then up to Spring street where we could get a real Italian pizza. They were right. Lombardy's was a quite the...

Our day started with sleeping late. We headed out to the NBC studios to do the tour only to find out they were sold out until 6:00pm. On the way we ran into our grandson Cayden's favorite characters. We headed down to 42nd and 7th avenue to catch the buss tour to Brooklyn. The line was so long we opted to walk the 5 blocks down to pier 83 to take the 3 hour tour. I know, I thought of the theme song for Gilligan's Island. It was relaxing trip around the entire island. Our tour guide was great! He later told us that he was once a professor of speech and acting at one of the universities there. While working the ship for a summer job, the company learned what he did and hired him as a tour guide.  After the tour we made it back up to Hotel (10 blocks) on foot. While crossing broad way we ran into a street vendors festival. Then we made it to our tour of the NBC studios and saw the sets of Jimmy Fallon, which is the same set as Johnny Carson when he was in NY. We also saw th...

Day two started with a thunderstorm about 5:00am so we slept in. When we  finally ventured out we started with a good breakfast in a very busy café. But they were hustling and kept the turnover going. They weren’t rushing folks but as folks left they had the table cleared in seconds and the next one sat down. Once again our waitress was from Poland. Go figure that we would eat at two different cafés and our waitresses would be from Poland. Of course no sweet tea!! Iced tea but not sweet! There was a lady sitting behind Shirley and she heard her ask for sweet tea and when leaving she told us she had committed the same offense. She was from Alabama. We left there and walked another two blocks to Central Park, an oasis in the midst of chaos. We too found it very peaceful. We took the horse and buggy ride and learned a lot about the park. There were rock outcroppings throughout and we learned that Manhattan is on bedrock. The tall buildings here can be built because they dig down un...

We ran all over town today. We started the day by going to see the Today Show. The whole crew came out for a cooking segment on was outside on the plaza. I took pictures of Matt, Ann, and the rest.  Shirley got to shake hands with Ann Currie, twice. Ann even called her “sweetie”.  That is the top of Shirley's Head We walked down to “Time Square” where we found a little out of the way café for breakfast. Our waitress is from Poland and has been in the US for about 4 ½ years. She had a great personality and was very good at her job. It was a really nice way to start off the day. By the way, you can get iced tea in New York just not sweet.   What an awesome view from atop the Empire State Building.  I was real nervous about the elevator ride but it was a non-event, except for the fact it took less than a minute to go 80 floors. I mean really fast but you didn’t get that feel of loosing your stomach. Our ears popped, but more going down than up. It was worth it....

Since the first of April I have been going to my grandson's baseball games. This is his second year to play and he is playing T-ball/Coach pitch. It has been an absolute fun thing to do. I must admit that I dreaded it before it began, but it has been so much fun to watch these 6 year old boys improve over the last weeks. His team is 8 wins and 1 loss and now is in second place in his division. While watching him my own baseball days, which were quite few, have come to mind. I remember playing T-Ball and moving up to when the players pitched. I didn't play anymore after the 5th grade, but I would like to share with you two stories that I remember. Story 1 I believe I was in the third grade and was at bat. In those days the batting helmets were quite different than today. They consisted of little more than a hard piece of plastic that went around the temples with ear holes and a strap that went over the head from ear to ear to hold it on. Well the little pitcher thought he w...