Help! I'm Being Improved!

New and Improved—

I cringe when I hear those words.

Especially when they apply to my computer. it means that somebody somewhere is changing things so that stuff I used to be able to do, I can no longer do without learning how to do it all over again from scratch.

Yes everything is improving but me.

When I think of improvements, I think of this photo of a billboard I saw on the Oddly Specific site—

New and improved means change.

The only thing in the universe that does not change is God. He is immutable. To change He would either have to get bader than He is, or gooder than He is. Neither is possible. His love does not change.

But computer systems change.

Boy do they change!

And I resist change.

Case in point: I got an e-mail saying that an improvement may knock my blog off the internet come March 26th. Of course I can improve my postings by going from an FTP to something else.

That’s fine, except that I don’t know what an FTP is.

I thought it had to do with sending flowers, until last night when my son and his wife explained that that last letter is a P not a D. For years I had not paid that much attention because I don’t want to send flowers so I ignored those initials. Donald explained that they mean File Transfer Protocol.

I used to watch West Wing when it was on tv so I knew the word protocol has to do with seating arrangements at a White House dinner.

Well, I was right about the arrangement part of my hazy definition. But I have not been invited to the White House yet.

So Sunday while the Superbowl players provided background noise, Donald and Helen answered a laundry list of questions I’d written down about computer improvements. Every answer means more work for me.

I almost snapped this photo of Helen and Donald with my keychain camera; they watched Superbowl while their cat Perl nudged my elbow (I love my little camera!).

One improvement I face involves plugging two new cables into my computer. Another may involve reformatting book files. Another apparently means learning a new software system. Another involves giving a third party access to withdraw cash from our bank account.

Whoa!

Not a chance of a snowball in Haiti.

Let me read that contract again.

These changes are supposed to keep me on-line and generate more income for me by generating greater book sales…. Humm, back in October and November I sent weeks reformatting books to do that very thing. Let’s check the accounting records….

Yes, my earnings have increased. I made 3 cents more than I made before I put all that work in.

Patience, John.

It takes time for improvements to show results. Right? After all this is the computer age when data moves around the world in seconds. In fact, when some company wants to remove money from our bank, they do it in the twinkling of an eye.

One improvement ahead will transfer my blog to Word Press; that challenges me.

My postings may have a new improved look, maybe even a different color scheme.

Also, watch for this guy to appear in my sidebar; he is the harbinger of a new FreeEbook to be offered each month after we get the program set up.

Yet another computer site improvement will be an 86-page sale catalogue for the Florida history materials I’ve collected over the past 35 years.

Yes, under duress, and with a suspicious mind, I am tiptoeing (dragged kicking and screaming) into the required improvements.

But I don’t want to be new and improved.

I’m old and entrenched.

Remember that old church song: Just As I am?

It says we surrender to God just as we are, naked, ashamed, confused, reluctant, “O Lamb Of God, I come”.

Barbara White, author of the Along The Way series of books (at www.bluefishbooks.info ) says, “The Lord loves me just as I am and too much to let me stay that way”.

St. Paul said, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away ; behold , all things are become new. And all things are of God…”.

He does not just patch me up; He makes me a new and improved creature.

Trouble is, this new nature gets packaged in the same box as my old nature. That creates problems.

I don’t want God to love me too much.

I don’t want to be improved.

I don’t want to learn new tricks.

I’d rather that God tolerated me instead of loving me.

Cause Love just don’t quit.

He won’t leave well enough alone.

So what if I have a few rough edges, I don’t like to be held to His grind stone. It hurts to be polished.

Lots of folks seem to hanker after joining churches—but they want to be members without any change in lifestyle or behavior or attitude. They want the same thing I want.

I like me as I is too.

Old and entrenched.

My e-friend Amrita, in her biographical sketch of Sundar Singh yesterday provides this illustration: A man in the river swims around unaware of the weight of water; but when he comes out and tries to lift even one bucket full of water, he realizes how heavy it is.

Sin is like that. We swim immersed in it as our natural element with hardly a thought. It is not until we begin to get out that we realize that sin has weight. A heavy, back-breaking burden pressing us down.

And, being old and entrenched, we thought it nothing to soak in sin.

No wonder we need the Lifeguard.

But I’m getting away from griping about improvements to my computer…

Be that as it may, floundering, I’ve screamed for help with my computer upgrades, with improvements and with the downright arbitrary changes which swamp me.

So my daughter-in-law Helen, who is a … What’s the right word for a female geek? Geekess? Geekette?—anyhow, Helen is coming to my rescue this afternoon to begin some of these many changes.

Look for exciting new changes and improvements to this site…. Maybe by March first. Can’t guarantee that, but it’s my target date.

Of course, that may change.

Mary? Eleanor? Where Are You?

The book I’m writing requires many footnotes.

I’ve worked on this manuscript, If God Leads Me Why Do I Run In Circles, off and on for years and I tend to forget where I got what?

If I steal material from one writer, that’s plagiarism; but if I steal from many writers, that’s research. I research biographies, histories and reference books a lot because other writers say what I want to say better than I can say it.

Thus, piles of book surround me as I work. As I read in my easy chair, a dozen sharp pencils at hand; books balance on the aquarium; books clutter the coffee table; books pile up in my lap; books, some open, some closed, fill the end table. The books bristle with bookmarks and Post-it notes like flattened sea urchins.

Camouflage for an uneducated man trying to write authoritatively.

So, yesterday I wondered whether it was Mary Chesnut or Eleanor Chesnut I wanted to quote? Mary Chesnut wrote an extensive diary during the Civil War; Dr. Eleanor Chesnut died a martyr during China’s Boxer Rebellion.

Which one wrote that poem?

And where did I put her book?

Fear for your lives goldfish as I try to browse the titles poised above you without getting out of my chair.

I narrowly avoided setting a Post-it note on fire as I fiddled with the stack of books by the ashtray. I shifted my feet, propped on the coffee table, to seek the volume I wanted there.

Nothing for it.

I’d have to get up out of my chair.

I found my glasses and put them on.

I stacked this book and that one on the floor beside me to go check the bookcase in the foyer…Oh. Here’s the book I wanted—it was open in my lap the whole time I was searching.

Must be some deep spiritual lesson here somewhere.

But I can’t figure out what it is.

By the way, here’s a photo of the lady:

P.S.: To family members in Maryland and Virginia complaining about Friday’s snow blizzard… It was so bad here in Jacksonville that yesterday when I was cleaning the swimming pool, the water felt so cold I could hardly stay in for more than 30 minutes.

P.P.S.: As I write this I hear Ginny behind me running the vacuum cleaner.

It sounds odd.

I look around to see her chasing some flying bug around the living room trying to slurp it from the air with the vacuum hose.

We both start laughing like crazy.

A typical Sunday afternoon at the Cowarts.

PPPPPSSSS: It’s now 4:18 Monday morning. I knocked off work for a few minutes to go outside and watch the space shuttle launch. Standing on our pool deck, I saw the rocket arc as though it were flying above the rising moon. Beautiful!

Glad to have seen this. If I understand correctly, this is to be NASA’s last launch (last night launch?) for a decade…. But I don’t want to start a tirade about that.

Note To The Kid In The Attic

Since this is Superbowl weekend, I doubt if many of my contemporaries are likely to read this entry—not that many ever do—so I’m using this to address the Kid In The Attic. He’s the reader I envision when I write, a kid who will stumble across my diaries in a dusty box in an attic 50 or a hundred years from now.

I want the Kid In The Attic to see how a Christian life worked out in real time for one lone guy at the beginning of the 21^st Century. This is pretty individualistic stuff, Kid, but to give you a peg to hang things on I think it’s a good idea to mention current news events now and then.

So, here’s your update on two things I’ve mentioned before:

Haiti’s earthquake.

It will be a cold day in Haiti before I send them another penny.

Last week the haitian government arrested ten American aid workers and charged them with kidnapping 32 children.

According to articles in the Wall Street Journal and in the New York Times, the ten Baptist missionaries were sponsored by a large church in Iowa which has sent aid workers into Haiti for years. They had bought property and had drawn up plans for an orphanage for Haitian children long before this earthquake.

Looks like such experienced aid workers would have known who to bribe.

Investigative reporters find no record of criminal connections or wrong doing among any of the Baptists except that one lady owes money from when her business went bankrupt in the present recession.

The ten under arrest for “kidnapping” the children face up to 15 years in a haitian prison—which seems to have escaped earthquake damage while news photos show rioting mobs of native people being served by American troops who appear to be carrying all the boxes.

Talk about bite the hand that feeds you!

So, my first reaction is not to give one penny aid and to stop payment on all checks that have already been written for Haiti earthquake relief, and to fly back from U.S. hospitals all those injured people American rescue workers have “kidnapped”.

An A-bomb would not be amiss either.

The earthquake was not the disaster; those people are.

They do more damage to each other than the earthquake ever did.

That’s my first thought… Then here comes a Bible passage (Matthew 23) to mind (I’ve got to stop reading that stuff!).

Jesus said, “Behold , I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify ; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city…”

But the love of God does not write us off even them. Despite how we all have treated the wise and good people, God keeps on sending them. Those rescue workers arrested in Haiti are just the last in a long line. In spite of their treatment, God’s Love keeps on coming.

He is relentless.

Swine Flu (H1N1)

Although a third wave may be in the offing, the Porky Flu epidemic dose not seem as bad as predicted.

Around the world, governments are trying to unload stockpiles of vaccines going stale. Loud voices accuse health organizations of crying wolf, being doom-sayers when there was no cause for alarm—and of even deliberately falsifying the severity of the flu danger just to get money for pharmaceutical companies.

Politicians bemoan money spent on unneeded vaccines.

On the other hand, Keiji Fududa, World Health Organization Pandemic Influenza Adviser, said that claims that H1N1 is a mild pandemic are wrongheaded.

"There have been over 14,000 deaths that have been laboratory-confirmed, many in young, previously healthy people. Who is going to tell their families that the virus is mild?" Fukuda wrote to TIME in an e-mail.

He said that the WHO's definition of influenza pandemics has always been based on transmissibility and has never had anything to do with the lethality of a virus; it was no different with H1N1.

In response to accusations of overreaction to what has amounted to a mild disease, Fukuda says that once the 2009 H1N1 pandemic had been declared, "WHO consistently made it clear that it could not predict the future course of the pandemic but consistently provided sober, balanced and scientifically supported information and guidance."

The quotes are from Time.

A couple of months ago, through our Civilian Emergency Response Team, Ginny and I trained to work at vaccination sites. But we were never mobilized. The anticipated huge crowds seeking inoculation never materialized.

Being in a high-risk group, Ginny did get her vaccination. Being in the Too-Old-To-Bother-About group, I did not. We took the CERT training courses but were not needed.

I feel disappointed that I missed the show, but grateful that the epidemic did not send death carts rolling down the streets collecting bodies for a mass burial pit (That has happened in Jacksonville in two previous epidemics, Yellow Jack and Spanish Lady).

Soon there will be another CERT disaster drill. I’ll have a chance to be a victim.

Age, arthritis and adrenaline preclude my training as a rescue worker pulling fair maidens from the rubble, but I am able to play the role of pathetic victim…

Sometimes I think I’ve been training for that role all my life.

In For The Long Haul—With Cookies

A passing tourist snapped this photo of Ginny and me in St. Augustine last summer:

We were sitting on a shady bench in a park smoking and talking about marriage.

Wednesday night at the library we again fell into a discussion about marriage. A young man noticed us and asked, “How do you two manage to stay together for so long?”

I replied, “The grace of Jesus Christ”.

I regretted that quip, a damn pious platitude to his serious question. Yes, what I said is true but evasive, a knee-jerk reaction to an out-of-the-blue question, not a real answer.

This stranger really had no interest in our marriage. He hungered for somebody to talk to about his own. He needed a listener, not a bumper sticker response to his pain.

He explained that he and his wife had been married for three years and now faced splitting up. “I don’t know if we should quit now or hold on a little longer,” he said.

“Hold on whatever it takes,” I said. “When all is said and done in this world the only thing you’ve got is each other”.

Understand that these words of wisdom come from a guy who failed at his first marriage. Ginny and I have been married for only 42 years now and I don’t want to fail again. And yes, recently a couple down the block who’ve been married as long as we have broken up. Just because you’ve been together a long time doesn’t mean you can take it for granted.

When the young man asked if there were some secret to staying in love, we felt at a loss to answer. We think we’re doing something right, but we can’t pinpoint what it is. Love is just there, sort of a white-noise background to each of us moving through life.

“Be totally honest with each other,” I ventured. “Nobody loves anybody all the time. Realize that, and don’t have unrealistic expectations”.

Ginny said, “One thing that’s helps us is to be able to say, ‘I love you forever, but I can’t stand you right this minute. Check back with me in the morning’”.

The lines at the video reserve counter moved on separating us from the stranger. “Hold on. It’s worth it in the long haul,” I encouraged him in parting.

Yes, it is the grace of Jesus Christ that keeps us going. I’m crazy in love with Ginny and she appears to fine me tolerable too, but it is God’s grace that makes us able to live with eachother. When our youngest daughter got married on January first (see that entry for photos), I think I gave her and Clint that same counsel, to cling to the Lord God and to eachother. That’s all that counts in the long run.

If we ever run into that stranger again, I might have more to say.

To show how a long-term, loving relationship works, here is the body of an e-mail about chocolate chip cookies; my son Johnny sent it to me last week:

A very old man lay dying in his bed. In death's doorway, he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favorite chocolate chip cookie wafting up the stairs.

He gathered his remaining strength and lifted himself from the bed. Leaning against the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom, and with even greater effort forced himself down the stairs, gripping the railing with both hands.

With labored breath, he leaned against the door frame, gazing into the kitchen. Were it not for death's agony, he would have thought himself already in Heaven.

There, spread out on newspapers on the kitchen table were literally hundreds of his favorite chocolate chip cookies.

Was it Heaven? Or was it one final act of heroic love from his devoted wife, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man?

Mustering one great final effort, he threw himself toward the table. The aged and withered hand, shaking, made its way to a cookie at the edge of the table, when he was suddenly smacked with a spatula by his wife.

“Stay out of those,” she said, “They're for the funeral”.

In Costume

Now I know why hardly any of my books sell.

I don’t have an apple costume.

Last night as Ginny and I made our weekly book run, some event was going on around the library. Hoards of people surrounded the place and the overflow encamped in Hemming Park. I never found out what the event was, but I noticed a number of people in costumes. A bunch of Star Wars troopers lounged by the bike rack. I saw an Indian chief, a chef, and a Victoria’s Secret Angel (or maybe that’s just what she normally wears to the office).

Once we forged through the crowd and got into the library, I noticed a number of tables set up in the lobby where local authors were signing their books. Outstanding among them was a gentleman in an apple costume (a real apple, not a computer system).

I asked permission to snap his photo with my little keychain camera; sorry about the blur but my hands shake too much to hold the thing steady. (You don’t want to watch me eat soup. Honest, you don’t).

This intrepid bookseller was promoting Lois Simon’s book Mac: Story of A Happy Apple (Vantage Press, © 2008). I asked his name but he said, “I’m only a prop. She wrote the book”. And he introduced me to Ms Simon who wrote and illustrated this story which she said is for kids from 3 to 103.

While I enjoyed talking with Ms Simon and the Apple Man, Ginny sat in the park across the street drinking a soda she bought from one of the street vendors.

Ms Simon is an accomplished artist whose paintings can be viewed at http://www.stellersgallery.com/Artists/ArtistPortfolioO.asp?artistID=38&O=1&R=0 When I checked out the website, I noticed that one of her paintings is called Leading The Way…

Ok, now I’m moving to a completely unrelated subject… or am I?

For years now I’ve been working on a book about divine guidance. Spent ten hours on it today. So far I have over 500 pages expounding about three words in the Shepherd Psalm, Psalm 23.

The three words—He leadeth me.

Naturally my title is If God Leads Me, Why Do I Run In Circles?

The book examines examples of how God leads people in the pages of the Holy Bible—those are solid examples of divine guidance.

It also examines examples of how God has lead notable people of the past such as Salvation Army founder William Booth whom I mentioned in yesterday’s posting. I am less positive about attributing divine guidance to such people. Yes, by their fruits shall ye know them, but does achieving success in some particular field necessarily mean a person was guided by God? After all, Attila was an eminently successful Hun.

Then the book also examines examples pulled from my own diaries for the past 30+ years. These examples shake and wobble worse than my hands! I really hesitate to ever pontificate saying, “God Led Me To…”. I feel more comfortable saying, “It seemed like a good idea at the time”.

For instance…

Back in the early 1970s I took a class in public speaking with a bunch of preachers. For one exercise, the teacher split us into small groups to teach a practice lesson to each other. Now I was fresh from a job as a long distance truck driver; I’d go for days on end alone without saying a word more than “Fill ‘er up” or “Eggs over easy”. And here these preachers orated all week long.

I worried that I’d make an ass of myself when I…

Ding!

A mental bell rang. The little light bulb flashed above my brain.

“Make an ass of myself… Make an ass…Isn’t there a Bible story about an ass that talked? Yes, Balaam’s donkey in Numbers 22 where as St. Peter said, “Balaam the son of Bosor, loved the wages of unrighteousness; But was rebuked for his iniquity: the dumb ass speaking with man's voice forbad the madness of the prophet”.

So, I constructed a big donkey head mask with long ears and when it came my turn to speak to the preachers, I put it on and told the whole story of Balaam from the viewpoint of the donkey!

Those preachers got the lowdown straight from the ass’s mouth.

It was a hoot!

Afterwards, Dr. Keith Johnson, director of Teens For Christ, came up to me saying, “My kids could use something like what you just did”. He invited me to teach some Bible lessons to his “Kids”.

TFC was a residential refuge at the beach for runaways, addicts, drunks, destitute people, the abused, the homeless, and disenfranchised. These “kids” ranged in age from young kids to guys in their 70s. Their common denominator was that none of them had any interest in religion whatsoever.

To tell them about the forgiveness of sin and Christ’s death on the cross, His return from the grave, and His love for them, I manufactured a lot of gimmicks to gain their interest and to make Bible lessons palatable for them.

From the one idea about wearing the donkey mask, I ended up teaching every week for about four years till the place went belly up.

One worm in my apple:

I think my long tenure as an unpaid Bible teacher had little to do with God’s leading and a great deal to do with my love of being center stage in the spot light. I wanted everybody to see how clever I am. I made the gimmicks more to display my talent than to glorify God.

Jesus warned about the perfidy of guys like me—“All their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi”.

In the light of that Scripture, can I claim that God lead me to make that donkey mask in the first place?

No.

It just seemed like a good idea at the time.

Likes, Don’t Likes, And Divine Guidance

Each morning the barkeep came outside the bar, attached a garden hose to an outside spigot, and hosed blood, spilled the night before in drunken fights, off the sidewalk.

The notorious bar sat at the corner of Eight and Main in Jacksonville’s Springfield section, an area since subjected to urban renewal, still a tough area but back then a squalid slum.

I drove by that corner every night going home from work.

A few years ago as I drove by one evening, I heard music, not honky-tonk music but a gospel tune. Glancing over, I saw a small group of clean-cut young people conducting an evangelistic meeting before a gathered crowd of bums. Interested, I pulled over, parked, and walked back to stand at the fringe of the watchers. Hot, sweaty and filthy from my day’s work, I blended right in with the other bums.

The guys in the church group looked like wimps to me—brave wimps to be out there at all, but wimps nonetheless. The group included a few girls, one especially noticeable because the way she enthusiastically kept time to the music with her tambourine.

A crusty street guy nudged me with his elbow. “Just look at that gal shake that thing”.

He was not referring to her tambourine.

“What do you suppose would happen,” he said, “If I was to run up there and grab her tits”?

I thought it over for a moment then answered in a slow drawl, “Well, I don’t know it for a fact, but I imagine somebody would throw you down on the pavement, kick off your kneecaps, then stomp you till blood squirts out your ass”.

Now he looked me full in the face. “You really think so”.

“I reckon”.

“Ain’t Christians supposed to love people”?

“Yeap”.

“Are you with those kids”?

“Nope. Just watching the show, same as you,” I said.

“Oh,” he said and edged away into the crowd.

After those pathetically young Christians finished their service uninterrupted, I got back in my car without having spoken to anyone else and drove on home.

I wouldn’t swear to it, but I suspect I did the will of God that day.

I had not thought of this non-incident for years till a conversation with my friend Wes yesterday reminded me of it.

Wes took me out to breakfast and when we returned to my house we enjoyed a long conversation about Christian mysticism, pietism, subjective religion, objective reality, and logic. Our talk centered around the question: Just Who’s In Charge Here Anyhow?

My talk with Wes Tuesday and my talk with Barbara Monday boosted my spirits to resume work on that will of God manuscript again.

By pondering the question of control, divine guidance, and God’s will for individuals, and by reading a biography this afternoon, I see four elements related to how the Lord guides us.

Sometimes God guides us by using things we like.

Sometimes God guides us through things we don’t like.

Sometimes He guides us through things other people don’t like.

And sometimes He guides us by using things other people do like.

I spotted these four elements at work in the lives of William and Catherine Booth, founders of the Salvation Army.

For instance, on April 10, 1852, William and Catherine met for the first time at the home of a mutual friend.

He liked what he saw.

She liked what she saw.

He walked her home afterwards.

As she later described it, “It seemed as if God flashed simultaneously into our hearts that affection which none of the changing vicissitudes with which our lives have been so crowded has been able to efface… Before we reached my home we both felt as though we had been made for each other”.

They married within three years. They remained together till her cancer death 38 years later.

I think they had received God’s guidance through something they liked.

On the other hand, William hated his job. When he was 13, his father had died and William became sole support of his mother and family. He had to take work as a pawnbroker’s assistant. Seeing destitute wretches pawn the very clothes off their backs just to buy bread, a night’s lodging, or another cup of gin, turned his stomach.

Yet it was that distasteful daily contact with the poor that developed Booth’s sense of compassion and influenced the future course of his life—and of England.

Walking home from a Methodist meeting one night, Booth said he was filled with a sudden spiritual exaltation, a sense of being forgiven by the blood of Christ, and a sense of gratitude to God. He knew this ought to be expressed by preaching the Gospel to the poor. He and Catherine decided to “reach for the worst”.

God was leading him by way of a job he did not like and found galling.

So, William Booth gathered a bunch of street people together and took them into his church. The church folk did not like these nasty sinners cluttering up the sanctuary. Booth and company were kicked out.

God guided Booth by way of something other people did not like.

Trusting God to provide and having no study income, William and Catherine began to preach on the streets, in front of bars and dance halls, at public hangings, anywhere lost, lonely, hurt people might be found. Their motto became “to work where the need is greatest, guided by faith in God and love for all people”.

The Booths had found their niche.

By 1879, they had established 81 preaching stations throughout London, recruited helpers, and held 140 services every week. They established soup kitchens, employment services, reading rooms, street schools, immigration helps, health care services, and a host of other needed helps for the poor… A book they and their son wrote, In Darkest England, changed the face of the British government’s social attitude to this day.

All rooted in the fact that some other people kicked them out of a church because the refined congregation did not like what they were doing. That’s the way it appears on the surface, but underneath are the Everlasting Arms.

What about something other people did like?

Once at one of Booth’s open air evangelistic meetings in Salisbury, a local builder named Charles Fry and his three sons became interested. The four happened to enjoy playing in a local brass band. Just because they liked to play, they brought their instruments to the meeting and began to play peppy tunes.

When someone objected that the tunes fit a barroom venue better than a religious meeting, Booth countered, “Why should the devil have all the good tunes?”.

Thus came into being the world-famous Salvation Army bands, rooted in God’s guidance through a bunch of guys who liked to toot their horns.

Taking inspiration from an organized military model, Booth fought the works of the devil .Near the end of his life as a guest of royalty, General Booth was invited to deliver an address in London’s prestigious Albert Hall. He said,

“While women weep as they do now, I’ll fight; while little children go hungry as they do now, I’ll fight; while men go to prison as they do now, in and out, in and out, I’ll fight; while there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I’ll fight—I’ll fight to the very end”.

Lunch With A Happy Hooker

My friend Barbara White has become a Happy Hooker.

Barbara is the author of the Along The Way series of books at www.bluefishbooks.info .

Yes, she’s joined a group of women who crochet or knit baby clothes which are given to mothers of newborns when they leave a charity hospital. The 18 or 20 ladies who crochet these caps, booties, and baby blankets call themselves The Happy Hookers.

The hooking part of the group name refers to crochet hooks.

“John, I do this because this is something I can do,” Barbara said as she treated me to lunch yesterday at Silver Star Chinese Restaurant. Because of an injury to her wrist, Barbara knits instead of crochets. “When I found out that I may live a while longer, I wanted to do something I’m able to do as service to the Lord, and I can do this,” she said.

It appears that the chemotherapy has worked for Barbara’s cancer; yet she felt it prudent yesterday to see an attorney to adjust her will. And since that brought her over to my side of town, she came by and picked me up for lunch.

Since I firmly believe in the old adage that the chief duty of a writer is to avoid writing, I was happy for the excuse to leave off work on the will of God book to go with her. No wonder it has taken me so many years to get this far with that book!

I have this deep ingrained feeling that no one reads what I write and that it does not matter if I write or not because my work is useless.

Barbara said I listen to the wrong voice. “The enemy’s voice is persistent and persuading. But it is not pervasive,” she said. “He is a smooth-talking liar. The Lord may convict but He does not belittle you”.

But I am so attuned to the put-down voice and have listened to it for so long that it is difficult for me to discern the Voice of God when it relates to the value of my own work, life or influence.

The main thing I cling to is that phrase of Scripture that declares I am “accepted in the Beloved”. And the Lord Christ said, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent”.

Barbara quoted that the important thing is not whether we make right decisions but that we make faithful decisions.

Over the weekend she attended the Bar Mitzvah of the grandson of a friend. The young man represents the third or forth generation in his family in that same temple. The continuity of faith there impressed Barbara greatly as the Torah scroll was passed down among family members before reaching the young man. He read the passage from Judges about Deborah and Barak.

Barbara said tears of worship streamed down her face during the service.

Of course, I also contributed to the high tone of our conversation as we also talked about e-books, writing and editing.

I told Barbara about a murder mystery I’ve been reading: a 15-year-old girl accuses a candidate running for governor of molesting her. She can prove it. She tells the two detectives that the politician has a birthmark on his testicles; it’s shaped exactly like a semicolon.

Outside the interview room, one cop says, “She’s lying. Somebody coached her.”.

“You don’t believe he could have done it”?

“Oh, he may have done it. What I don’t believe is that a 15-year-old in our educational system knows what a semicolon looks like”.

Quiet Joy

Normally I rise and start work between 3 and 4a.m., courtesy of God’s blessing of prostate cancer, but Saturday morning He granted me the grace to sleep till five.

I pad out to the living room and boot the computer to begin my day’s work.

Our miniature grandfather clock ticks away minutes and chimes the hour. My fish swims back and forth in the aquarium beside my desk. Ginny’s useless bird, Fancy, preens in his cage.

Outside darkness melts into a gray dawn. Ground fog drifts outside my window obscuring view of other houses down the street. That mist dissolves into a low drizzle of rain. Were I filming a Dracula movie, this would be a perfect day to shoot.

I intended to mow the lawn today but the rain cancels that project. I feel the comfortable pleasant relief you feel when something you planned to do but really didn’t want to gets thwarted by outside circumstance.

As I thought and prayed through my morning devotions, God Almighty did not fuss at me for a change.

The news tells me that a city council in England, in a movement to be all inclusive, has made applications to drive a taxi available in Braille for blind people. Once, the church I sometimes attend initiated a campaign to be “All Inclusive” in our community. Everybody in the pool! I see a parallel between the church’s movement and the one by that city council.

But as I started to get critical in my thinking, I also pondered that invitation in the last chapter of the Bible: “The Spirit and the bride say, Come . And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely”.

Whosoever will may come.

And I pondered Mark 8:34 where Jesus said, “Whosever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me”.

An exclusive all inclusiveness.

A no nonsense all inclusiveness with barbs.

But, not being a blind taxi driver, I need not concern myself over much about such things. The Lord knoweth His own.

I hear the clock radio in the bedroom beep 6a.m., Ginny’s usual wake-up time. She ignores the sound. After ten minutes, I go in and punch the button to stop the thing. She mutters a sleepy, “Thank you” and snuggles down under the covers for another couple of hours.

I answer a handful of e-mails, read blogs and news, think about work on the will of God manuscript and about the transcribing of Barbara White’s Prayer Diary.

I hear the rain on the roof falling heaver now.

Ginny wakes and comes out in her robe for coffee; her sleep-tousled white hair forms a silver halo around her face in the lamp light. She zombies awhile, sipping coffee as we discuss going out for breakfast. Decide not to.

As she started cooking, I shave, shower, and dress in tan slacks with a favorite tan wool sweater, loose enough to be comfortable, warm enough to be cozy.

In the kitchen I find her at the stove wearing her sweats. I slip my hands under her sweatshirt. She slaps my fingers away with a smile of pleasure and promise. At the sink I wash yesterday’s dishes as she fries bacon, cracks eggs, and stirrs grits.

She serves my bowl of grits so hot they could smelt iron ingots. Just right! Touch a pat of butter to those grits and it disappears into a pool of gold. Ginny fills the pepper shaker and I sprinkle a constellation of black stars on the white surface.

The Lord Jesus has granted me a morning without my hands shaking today so I can spoon my food without slopping it all over me. Thank You, Lord.

I lather jalapeno jelly on my toast. Ginny’s mother bottles this green jelly and sends me a few jars every Christmas. This morning feels more like Christmas than Christmas did.

We retired to our chairs in the living room. Ginny reads her Martha Grimes novel; I hold a musty volume of theology unopened in my lap, a book which interests me but would not keep me from drowsing off.

I run bristled cleaners through my pipes. A fresh pouch of Toasted Cavendish rests beside the steaming coffee mug at my elbow—my Saturday-morning coffee mug, the one with the Vargas girl in the red swimsuit.

An atmospheric inversion, or whatever, causes my pipe smoke to float in visibly layers a few feet below the ceiling. Wind blows outside. I hear oak branches scrape against the wall of the house. Our electric fire logs flicker.

For God only knows what reason, Ginny starts to clean out the hall closet by the bathroom. I hear her muttering to herself in the background, saying, “Why in the world are we keeping this”?

No answer needed.

A few minutes later I look over to see an alchemist at work. She’s intent on combining partially empty bottles of shampoo. I snap a photo with my new keychain camera:

I don’t disturb her.

I open Kierkegaard’s diary on my lap, but stare into space instead of reading..

This is the day which the Lord hath made…

Why can’t they all be like this?

Who Needs e-books?

This morning’s :London Daily Mail newspaper announced that the Portsmouth City Council now makes applications to get a taxi driver’s license available in a new mode—in Braille.

Seven Years Ago...

Although I’ve converted my files so my books are available in both print and e-book editions, I’m concerned about the dangers of e-books.

You see, yesterday I picked up four garbage cans full of fallen branches from our yard and afterwards I took a bath; and while laying in the bathtub reading a murder mystery, I fell asleep.

That got me thinking…

What I wonder is—if you fall asleep in the tub while reading an e-book, will you get electrocuted?

Steve Jobs did not address that possibility when he unveiled his new Ipad reader the other day; and the folks selling Kindles don’t talk about it either. Are they hiding something?

I prefer real books with ink and paper myself, but then, I’m old fashioned.

Besides picking up sticks yesterday, I also worked preparing more of my friend Barbara White’s old diaries for transcription. Her Along The Way series of books is also available at www.bluefishbooks.info. Last year she entrusted me with the 14 spiral-bound notebooks containing her prayer diaries and I’m transcribing and editing them for future publication.

I see one of my rolls as a writer is to preserve old diaries which might otherwise get lost and I’ve devoted a lot of energy to that end.

Here is a scanned page (click to enlarge) from Barbara’s entry for December 19, 2002:

That page caught my attention because it mentions Ginny and me. It got me wondering what my own diary for the same date might say.

So I dug back in the closet to pull down my own diary from seven years ago and here is what I found:

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

A few minutes ago, about 8:30 a.m., my brother David called on his cell phone saying he’s driving up to Shand’s Gainesville for his lung transplant as soon as he arrives. Months ago I agreed that if he survives the operation I will go to Gainesville, take the training and be his caregiver for a week or ten days.

So much for the Christmas plans Gin & I made last night.

We’ll see what happens.

Anytime the phone rings, Ginny and I both say, “Oh goody, there’s somebody with plans for our life”….

However, in spite of all my bitching, on some level I want to be 100% at the disposal of Jesus Christ. And if He has holiday plans for me different from my own, I don’t like it but I intend to follow Him to the best of my ability. I won’t win any points for being a cheerful giver, but I will try to fit into His plans. Damn it.

It would be nice if I could pray like Tomas A’Kempis in Of The Imitation Of Christ for real:

"O Lord, Thou knowest what is best for us, let this or that be done as Thou pleaseth. Give what Thou wilt, and how much Thou wilt, and when Thou wilt. Deal with me as Thou thinkest good, and as best pleaseth Thee, and is most for Thy honor. Set me where Thou wilt, and deal with me in all things just as Thou wilt. I am in Thy hand: turn me round, and turn me back again, as Thou shalt please. Behold, I am Thy servant, prepared for all things; for I desire not to live unto myself, but unto Thee; and O that I could do it worthily and perfectly!

Amen to that, Brother Tom.

Barbara White took me to lunch at Silver Star. She says she feels she has a discerning spirit which indicates that I am in danger of burn out or some kind of health problem. While we were there, Barbara felt that Peggy, the young waitress who has served us for years, was in pain; when she and Peggy talked, it turns out that Peggy has a large tumor which requires an operation scheduled for next month.

While I was out, a library in New England called Eve (our daughter who was home from college camped in our tv room during the holidays) for an hour-long job interview by phone. She feel good about it. She sounded so professional on the phone; I’m very proud of her.

Eve, Ginny and I went grocery shopping at Publix; while they were in the store, I sat out on a bench smoking my pipe. It was the most peaceful experience I’ve had in weeks..

When we got back, there was still no word from or about David. Not knowing whether or not I’ll be here for Christmas, I took a present over to Chris for the new child she and Rex are taking in.

Being mean and cruel I chased Eve out of her room so Ginny and I could watch West Wing tonight. I also asked her to make arrangements to stay with Jennifer this weekend if possible so Ginny and I could have some time together; recently I’ve wondered if our sex life is over altogether.

Thursday, December 19, 2002, Jennifer’s Birthday

Again today I went over my Will of God ms. (Yes, this is the same manuscript I’m still working on here in 2010, I’m a slow writer) It feels good to be nosing around serious work again.

Eve rode downtown with Ginny to go to the credit union so I had a few hours alone in the house.

At 6 a.m. this morning Barbara called Ginny. Yesterday, she, Barbara, felt a premonition of some sort that I am in some kind of undefined danger, physically, mentally, spiritually, or all three and she wanted to talk with Gin about it. I don’t know what to make of this. Gin doesn’t either.

Still no word about what happened or is happening with David. (He survived the transplant and in 2010 is still doing fine).

At her office Christmas party today Ginny won the prize for decorating the best office door. She used the text of the editorial Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Clause as a center piece then surrounded it with various pictures of Santa from all sorts of countries and cultures all over the world.

Here’s the selection I offered for her door:

Take Up Thy Mug And Walk!

Yesterday I finished correcting the 470 proof pages of A Dirty Old Man Goes To The Dogs. That book is now available in both print and e-book formats at www.bluefishbooks.info .

I also entered the book in the Google Books Program, but it will take about two weeks to show up there.

Working with the e-book formatting drives me nuts.

It involves an altogether new discipline and I feel I’ve been disciplined enough already in this life.

It’s that bottle in the smoke thing all over again. I don’t want to learn new computer stuff. I know more than I want to know already, but I’m forced to press on learning more and more to make my books manageable and marketable.

There’s a lot to be said for illiteracy.

In fact, last Saturday a man and his son, a boy of about ten, came into the restaurant where Ginny and I were enjoying smoked turkey BBQ. The little boy read the menu to his father because the man could not read.

I thought that both sad and touching.

Good for the kid.

Anyhow, I hope my books begin to sell better, because we face a financial reverse. About 15 years ago the finance department where Ginny works made a mistake. An audit last November finally notice the mistake.

They came up with a plan to correct their mistake.

All they have to do is reduce Ginny’s salary by 11.6 percent (8.6 percent beginning next month and an additional 3 percent later).

Problem solved.

Their callous letter outraged me.

It was their mistake. Nothing to do with us. But we have to pay for it.

I told Ginny to get in the car. I’d drive her to her office so she could pick up her house plants and coffee mug. I wanted her to walk out. To quit on the spot.

Her reasoning is that 88 percent of her income is better for us than zero percent.

Besides, she’s doing something vital toward feeding hungry children and does not want to abandon them.

She’s both Christian and fiscally responsible.

I’m the pissed out of shape hothead.

Adding to my boil is that this week a guy, a foreign national, came by four times to talk with me about how a local church is exploiting him and his family—if the situation is truly as he portrays it, it borders on slave labor.

I inquired about the legality of what they are doing and it appears legal—but it is as sleazy as Hell. God save us from churches skirting that line between legal and right.

Of course whenever I feel moral indignation, the Holy Spirit reminds me in a flash of the times when I have done the same thing—on a smaller scale, but the same thing—that I’m indignant about. In the present case, I’m remembering times when I exploited guys who worked for me.

When I think of bad guys, it’s easy to see that they is me—only younger.

Jesus said, judge not that ye be not judged.

But I’m not judging, I’m being discerning.

See, there I am again skirting between what is legal and what is righteous.

Good thing Jesus keeps His eye on me because I haven’t given Him much thought recently.

Anyhow, I hope my latest book/e-book sells well. I’m consulting Donald and Helen later this week about e-book contracts, additional formats, and such.

Oh, by the way, about the kid in the BBQ place. At the next table sat a man in a group of people, apparently hunters, judging from their camouflage gear and boots.

This one guy sported an interesting tee shirt.

On first glance I thought he was an environmentalist or something like that because the top line read: God Made A Place On This Earth For All His Creatures…

Below that were vivid wildlife photos of a jumping trout, a leaping deer, and a flying pheasant.

And the bottom line read: Right Beside The Potatoes And Gravy!

A Bottle In The Smoke

The image of a smoking caterpillar sprang into my mind.

Yes, John Tenniel’s 1865 illustration of the caterpillar puffing on a hookah in Alice In Wonderland imprinted itself on my brain. But alas, it was the wrong image.

This came up last night during our devotions. For years Ginny and I nurture the custom of reading a short Bible passage and praying briefly after dinner practically every night.

Last night as Ginny read a few verses from the longest chapter in the Bible, we encountered these words:

I know , O LORD, that Thy judgments are right, and that Thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me.

Let, I pray Thee, Thy merciful kindness be for my comfort, according to Thy word unto thy servant.

Let Thy tender mercies come unto me, that I may live: for Thy law is my delight….

My soul fainteth for thy salvation: but I hope in Thy word.

Mine eyes fail for Thy word, saying , When wilt Thou comfort me?

For I am become like a bottle in the smoke; yet do I not forget Thy statutes.

How many are the days of thy servant? when wilt Thou ….

Whoa!

Back up for a minute there.

“Don’t you mean smoke in a bottle?” I asked.

That’s when I thought of Alice’s caterpillar smoking fine tobacco in a Turkish water pipe—the smoker draws smoke through water in the bottle to cool it

I didn’t think they were blessed with pipe tobacco back in Old Testament days.

“No,” Ginny said, “It’s not ‘smoke in a bottle’; it says, ‘A bottle in the smoke’. What do you suppose that means? Did they even have glass bottles back then”?

Seeking answers to our questions, just for fun, we looked up the passage in a couple of different Bible translations:

One renders the Hebrew text as, “There's smoke in my eyes—they burn and water, but I keep a steady gaze on the instructions You post”.

Another says, “I am shriveled like a wineskin in the smoke, exhausted with waiting. But I cling to Your principles and obey them”.

Another says, “I have become like a wine-skin black with smoke; but I still keep the memory of Your rules”.

Another, “Although I have become like a shriveled and dried out wineskin, I have not forgotten Your laws”.

And another, “I am as useless as a discarded wineskin; yet I have not forgotten Your commands”.

Oh, that’s right. In the old days they kept wine in a cured leather sack. To drink, you hoisted the pliable bag up, rested it on your upraised elbow, squeezed the bag, and squirted the wine into your mouth without touching your lips to the spout—very macho.

As a curio, you can still buy wineskins. Try a college book store or one of those Pier One or World Import places.

Years ago, when I was teaching the Gospel of Luke to an adult Bible class, we had a Breakfast With Jesus lesson because so many of the things Jesus said and did happened at a meal. I asked everyone in the class to bring in some food mentioned in the Bible. They brought pieta bread, figs, apples, smoked fish, cheese, roast lamb—and one person brought in a wine skin and we took turns trying to drink from it without getting soaked.

Great fun.

This photo of an Italian statue of Polyphemus drinking from a wineskin looks just like me trying it. I mean the sculptor Antonio Novelli might well have used me for his model of the Cyclops.

Well, not exactly.

But you get the idea.

But, He-Man statue aside, why did the Psalmist say he feels like a wineskin in the smoke?

Jesus may have had this Old Testament Scripture in mind when He said, “No one puts new wine into old wineskins. The old skins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine must be stored in new wineskins. That way both the wine and the wineskins are preserved”.

When a wineskin bottle is fresh and pliable, it expands as the wine inside does. But if the skin is left hanging around, say on a tent pole, smoke from the hearth dries out the leather. It gets stiff. It cracks. It shrivels. It gets old. It can’t hold the new.

Oh, now I’m getting the picture. The Psalmist is saying he feels like a bottle in the smoke, dried up, past his sell-by date.

I can identify with that.

For instance, for the last few months I’ve encountered the problems associated with transforming my print books into e-books. I resist. I’m old fashioned enough to only think of books as real books and those others as air books… yet publishers everywhere confront the popularity of e-books with a new generation of readers. I’ve been working on new formats and considering the implications of free-range books and digital rights management.

New wine for my stiff old hide.

New technology. New ideas. New formats. New wine.

I face similar factors in my spiritual life. I’m comfortable with the way I am. I don’t want change. I want the familiar. I like the old hymns, the old methods, the old sermon modes—all this new stuff I see expanding in religious circles makes me feel as though I have gas.

Swollen up.

Ready to pop.

Seems to me like organized Christianity needs a good fart.

But that’s a different subject.

Saint Paul once said, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away ; behold , all things are become new. And all things are of God…”.

Yes, the Lord is always bringing new things into my life, new people, new ideas, new problems, new victories, new defeats, a new Heaven and a new earth. He stretches me beyond my present capacity.

But I resist.

Like the Psalmist I too feel like a bottle in the smoke. Dried up, set in my ways. Like the Cyclops I’m content to dwell in my safe little cave. Like Alice’s caterpillar, I all I want is to sit on my mushroom, smoke my pipe, and watch the world pass by.

I say, “Thanks very much, Lord, but that’s enough. You can stop now. I’m happy the way things are. I like me the way I am. Quit already!”

And He says, “Open your mouth wide and I will fill it”.

I suspect He knows what He’s doing.

The Psalm says, “My soul fainteth … Mine eyes fail … I am become like a bottle in the smoke”.

That’s my condition.

It also says, “Yet, I do not forget Thy Statutes”.

That’s my hope.

First Photos With My New Toy

Yesterday, Ginny bought me a new toy.

No special occasion, a just for the hell of it gift.

Now, I own a brand new Aries Mini Digital Camera, Model ATC-0103.

Hoot!

Of course, I snapped a photo of her across the table from me in a fast food restaurant as the first picture with my new camera:

Over our coffee we talked about how in the Bible God broke into peoples lives while the people engaged in ordinary, everyday activities—fishing, herding sheep, thrashing grain, filling out tax forms. The Lord of all creation is Lord of ordinary days.

My own ordinary activities recently involve correcting proof copy for my book A Dirty Old Man Goes To The Dogs. Two things impress me about this manuscript:

First, some sections are really good. That surprises me. Once I write a piece, I’m inclined to forget it and dismiss it as over and done with, so when I re-read it months later, it amazes me that I could have written so well. I mean this book is not terrible awful.

The other impressive thing is how many mistakes I make. I mean, I have gone over manuscript drafts before submitting it to the printer. Even so, I’m finding typos (our for out; and form for from are two I make all the time). I’m finding I misuse words that sound similar but have different meanings (such as fine and find). I’m finding inconsistencies in numbers. And I find that I should have stayed awake in seventh grade English grammar when they taught the use of commas…or should that word be comas?

Anyhow, such stuff occupies my ordinary activities over recent days.

Once we got home, I played with my new camera some. Here’s a photo of my pipes and ashtray:

The little camera works fine, but my shaking hands blur the picture. (An age-related nerve thing sometimes causes me to wobble a bit).

The camera’s best feature is that it has only two buttons: on/off and snap photo. That’s just my speed.

I mean we own this other digital camera that offers 837 features and settings. I think it has settings for taking pictures of flowers, one for pictures of mountains, one for portraits. I think there’s one setting for photographing male turtles and another for female turtles—it won’t work if you can’t tell the difference (fortunately, I can).This camera has a day/month and year timer and a setting for getting close-ups of coins. It will pop corn. It will calculate logarithms. I think there’s even a taser setting in case you want to take photos of unconscious people.

I can’t work that camera! I must have 600 photos of my own feet from when I lowered that camera before it finished focusing on the scene I was trying to photograph.

However, my new mini digital camera has advanced to the high point in technology that it only has two buttons and I can actually take pictures with it.

There is no flash attachment so the lens gathers available light—like so:

This morning, my friend Wes treated me to breakfast at one of the worst restaurants either of us has ever been in and I snapped this photo of him beside a waterfall/fountain in the dining room:

Again, it’s my shaking hands that cause the blurring.

One of the best things I like about my new toy is that this camera dangles from my keychain; yes it is that small. I can always have it handy in case I see something beautiful I want to capture. For instance, when we finally got out of that restaurant, across a parking lot, I saw this distinct weather front moving into Jacksonville:

It spanned from horizon to horizon—miles and miles of straight-line storm clouds, every inch with a bright silver lining in the morning sun.

Yes, I am ready to photograph anything I come across now.

That reminds me, Saturday while browsing over old diaries in a book store, I came across this anecdote about photography:

A reporter asked Marilyn Monroe, “Is it true that you posed for those pictures with nothing on at all”?

Marilyn replied, “Certainly that’s not true. The whole time I was posing I kept my radio on”.

Book Value

Over the weekend I overheard two conversations, entirely different on one level, about the same thing on another.

These struck me as important because I’m in the process of proofreading the manuscript of my book A Dirty Old Man Goes To The Dogs. In a few weeks that book should be ready of publication in both print and e-book formats. Therefore, Ginny and I recently engaged in long conversations ourselves about the value of my work. This is a long-standing topic for us.

I overheard the guy in the restaurant not because I was eavesdropping, but because he was talking to a man in a different booth. Why they didn’t sit together I don’t know. Because they were neglecting their wives during the meal to talk across space with one another, I suppose.

One couple already sat in a booth when Ginny and I got to the restaurant. A bit later this other couple arrived. I saw them pull in the parking lot in a tricked-out super-sized, duel-cab pickup, and I noticed the fine quality of the black and white plaid shirt the guy wore when he walked in the door.

This guy explained to his friend at an adjacent table that he bought houses which had been repossessed, patched them up, then rented them out. “The folks that had bought that place were paying over $200,000 for it; in the repo auction, I picked it up for only Forty-Three Five cash,” he boasted.

He laughed at the dilemma of the poor dumb saps losing their home.

He felt gleeful about it.

Their disaster equaled his opportunity.

Nothing immoral or illegal about buying low and selling high. But, somehow I felt the guy was greasy.

When the man at the other table questioned about problems with renters, the entrepreneur boasted about how easy it is to evict people who can’t meet their rent payments. You give them 30 day’s notice, then call in an eviction company. Yes there are companies whose only business is evicting renters. You pay the fee, they put the residents out on the street, change the locks, and hand you the new key. You don’t even have to be on the site at all.

The guy boasted that he’s bought at least one repossessed house a year since 1980 but that recently property values have dropped so much that he makes a killing every month or so now.

Why do I worry about the danger of Hell’s fire for such a man?

If he’s being at all unethical, he did not seem to have a clue about it. Just doing business. Making wise investments. Getting the most value for his money.

Why does my skin crawl hearing him talk?

I feel so sorry for him.

I wonder about his values.

Ginny said I should not be so judgmental; I said, “I’m not judgmental, I’m discerning”.

The other conversation, the one I overheard in the book store, also concerned value.

As I waited my turn in a long line at to get up to the cashier to pay for a history of Amelia Island, a second line of people waited in another line to exchange books for store credit. The two lines crossed.

Busy place that book store. (Although I saw no one buying one of my books).

I noticed a lady in the exchange line. Well-dressed. Heels. Expensive sweater. Look of old Ortega money. Frowning as though worried. Impatient about waiting in line with all these peasants who carried shopping bags or cardboard boxes overflowing with books to exchange.

She herself carried five small books wrapped in white tissue paper.

When she got to the counter I overheard her tell the evaluator about how valuable her books were. “All these are from the 1800s,” she said. “They’ve been in our family for years. I want to sell them now. They just take up space. How much are they worth?”.

The evaluator carefully unwrapped the leather-bound volumes. I could see they were in excellent condition but I could not make out the titles.

He checked for bookplates and autographs.

He consulted his computer.

He carefully re-wrapped the books in the tissue and handed them back to the woman.

“I’m not going to buy these,” he said. “They have no resale value”.

Boy, did she get hot!

She demanded to know why her books were not worth the hundreds or even thousands of dollars as she expected. “These are really old books,” she said. Her voice reeked of suspicion that he was pulling some sort of scam.

Everyone knows old books are worth a lot of money.

“Not these,” he explained. Patiently he told her about what makes a book valuable. Just being old hardly counts. Condition matters (and these were in fine condition). Provenance matters (but these were not autographed).

But the thing that matters most is that someone else will want to buy them.

“I can’t sell these, because no one is likely to want to buy them,” he said.

Again, I could not see the titles but I know the sort of book these were: maybe 1892 Real Estate Values In Collier County, Wisconsin. Or an 1832 edition of Elsie’s Prize Pig by Mrs. Judge Monroe Wombarton—old, but not valuable. They stayed in fine condition for 200 years because no body was interested enough to open the covers for two centuries.

The lady left the store fuming—but there was something else… I felt she was desperate. I felt she only ventured into the unfamiliar venue of a book store because she was short of cash and had heard somewhere that old books might be valuable.

I felt sorry for her.

The two conversations remind me of my own quest for values. I often question the value of my own work. What good is writing a book that hardly anybody reads?

But value resides in what someone is willing to give for a thing…

Or, does it?

Some things have enormous intrinsic value whether the anybody around recognizes it or not.

For instance, I once saw an antique show on tv when a man brought in an American Indian soapstone tobacco pipe which the evaluator said was worth something like $30,000! The guy said that at home he’d been using it as a tack hammer!

And as I recall, one morning in 1844 German scholar Constantine Tischendorf found a novice monk at St. Catherine’s Monastary, Sinai, starting a fire to cook breakfast with torn-out pages from an old book written in uncial Greek. Turned out that Tischendorf discovered the book to be Codex Sinaiticus, widely regarded as the most valuable book in the world!

But, until Tischendorf recognized the value, it had no value.

Fire starter.

Where does that thought take us?

Thinking about this stuff reminds me of what St. Peter said about the value of Jesus Christ He said that Christ is valuable—precious—to those who believe, but that those who do not believe count Christ as worthless, as of no more value than a broken brick laying squished in the mud at some construction site.

All the time I overhear or read words by people who do not seem to value Christ at all. He just does not enter into their value system.

That says nothing about Him; It speaks reams about them.

Treasure is treasure—even if you hammer tacks or boil your morning coffee with it.

If we do not recognize the value, who looses?

St. Peter says it better: “He that believeth on Him shall not be confounded . Unto you therefore which believe He is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence…”

I Forgot

I’ve admitted before that petty thieving is one of my besetting sins.

It’s a temptation that’s been with me for as long as I can remember. Nothing major. I don’t have the guts to be a bank robber, a stock trader, or a CEO, but I’ve been known to steal little things, things I can palm, or sneak away with.

There’s a reason I bring this up.

I’ll get to it later.

Friday I planned to have lunch with an old friend. We’d set this up before Christmas but postponed it till now because of the pressure of other holiday activities. I’d bought her a Christmas present which I intended to hand her after lunch, a lunch where we talked mostly about writing (She’s preparing an autobiography and wanted some tips about getting it published).

She is one of the three or four people who read my blog and she told me how she’d laughed about my story of my mysterious limp a couple of days ago.

That lead to our talking about memory and how I’m becoming more and more forgetful. I wonder if I’m developing what my grandmother used to call Galloping Senility, after all I am over 70 now, and the specter of Alzheimer’s takes on a haunting solidity at my age.

We ate lunch at a restaurant I’d never been to before, one way across town on the south side of the River, about 18 miles from my home. Our table overlooked a marina where millionaires tie up their yachts. It had been cool when I drove Ginny to work so I could have the car for the day and I wore my favorite jacket.

Let me tell you about my favorite jacket: when I was a little kid World War II was still going on and of course every movie featured heroic American airmen wearing leather flight jackets. We called them Bombardier Jackets. Brown leather. Pockets all over. Cool leather collar that you could snap a fur lining on. Zippers and snaps and epaulets on each shoulder where you could stick your flight gloves through when you weren’t wearing them.

The jacket that won the war.

John Wayne wore this kind of jacket.

I wanted one.

All the guys wanted one.

My parents could not afford to buy me one.

I spent my entire deprived childhood without a Bombardier’s Jacket. Even went off to college without ever owning one. Got married (twice) wearing something else.

Then, about five years ago at a garage sale, I spotted a Bombardier’s Jacket—slightly worn. Well, more than slightly. Torn in places. Shine rubbed off the leather. Holes in the pockets. Ripped lining and the fleece stuff inside comes out in puffs. Looked like the jacket had been worn by some guy on the ground during a bombing.

New, a World War II style airman’s jacket costs upwards of $400; My wonderful garage sale jacket cost me a quarter. Not a quarter of $400, but a quarter of a dollar. 25 cents.

My wife, who is not known for her fashion sense, says I was overcharged.

In the five or six years I have proudly worn My Jacket, it has not grown any less shabby. But if a Bombardier Jacket is good enough for John Wayne, it’s good enough for John Cowart.

So, my friend and I sit on this sunny deck, eating shrimp, sipping tea, watching yachts bob in the river, talking about writing, diaries, and life.

The glare off the water flashes in my eyes.

The sunlight in the open air warms me up. I take off My Jacket and place it in a nearby chair on the deck. It lays there in a wad looking like a rag without my robust manly body to fill it out.

As we discuss the autobiography, my friend observes that the people in our lives are like a tree: Some are leaves, they hang around for a while then blow away. Some are branches, more substantial than leaves, they seem solid for a season, then they break off leaving stumps. Then there are tree-trunk people rooted deep in the earth, permanent fixtures in your life, they are going to be there for you not to be shaken till the hurricane of death itself uproots them.

She said it’s important to recognize what kind of tree part the people around us represent. She said recently she valued someone as a trunk, but he turned out to be a leaf.

Now, when we went up on the deck, I’d left my pipe and tobacco pouch on the dash of the car. I was ready for a smoke. We went down to the parking lot and a truck had me blocked in so I had to maneuver around him, then I drove to drop her back at her house. Then I drove back to my house and about halfway home I realized that I had forgot to giver her that Christmas present.

Tough.

Before I got across the river, I had to turn on the car’s air conditioner. That’s Florida weather for you—19 degrees last Sunday, over 80 today.

Got home. Put the Christmas present on the table. Got undressed to shower and shave to meet Ginny. Reached for my matches. They are in My Jacket pocket…

My Jacket!

My Jacket is still 18 miles away across the river on the chair at that restaurant which is called ???

What was the name of that place?

I forgot.

About that time I realized that Ginny’s cell phone was in My Jacket’s pocket. I’d forgotten that. Now, I had panicked visions of somebody finding My Jacket, taking out the cell phone and placing call after call to Dakar. And we’d get the bill!

I just can’t remember the name of that restaurant!

Called my friend to ask her the name of where we’d just had lunch. She didn’t know either, just that nice new place on the river. She called somebody she knew and found out the name. She called the restaurant. The waitress said she’d found this rag—My Jacket. Since the place was closer to her house, my friend drove to pick it up and said she’d meet me on this side of the river in Orange Park where she had an afternoon appointment anyhow.

I quickly got dressed again and headed out to drive the ten miles to Orange Park. About half way there, I thought, “I’ll give her the Christmas present I forgot when we… O Crap. I’d forgot and left the present on the table at my house”.

She turned into the abandoned filling station off I-295 just ahead of me. So I met her car and retrieved My Jacket…

Ginny’s cell phone was still in the pocket.

Thanks be to God!

Drove back from Orange Park, past my house, and across the north side of town to pick Ginny up from work.

When we got home, the forgotten Christmas present still sat on the table… I’ll give it to my friend next year… Unless I forget again.

What does all this rambling about things I forgot to remember have to do with the life-long problem of stealing that I started out writing about?

Well, in my mind it relates to the single most important prayer in the Bible.

When Jesus was crucified, He was nailed up between two thieves?

The Gospels do not tell us the age of these thieves.

I think one of them could have been an old thief, a 70-year-old thief—a guy like me.

He’s the one who prayed, “Lord, remember me…”