July 24, 2005

�A Fresh Start� (Conclusion)

I was taken off guard by the flush of anger that rose inside of me. It was an instant response to something that surely had occurred hundreds of times before, at the very least. I caught glimpses of the people sitting in the crowd around me, bending over to pick up something which was no longer useful for me to bring. It was like being denied something that had very likely been one of the most precious things to me in life.

Who was I angry with? No one really. It was an anger borne out of frustration and a feeling of isolation.

I recalled the words once spoken to someone else, � I�m telling you the very truth now: When you were young you dressed yourself and went wherever you wished, but when you get old you'll have to stretch out your hands while someone else dresses you and takes you where you don't want to go."*

Perhaps I wasn�t there yet. But it felt like it.

How had I so fallen in love with this? Where did it all begin? Almost everyone had it available to him or her. Most people seemed to put it aside and pay little attention to it except for the appropriate occasions. Over the years I would hear stories of people being denied the use of it or even not allowed to possess it. Those stories seemed distant and unlikely in my environment. But they hung like a dreadful cloud, nonetheless.

When I was a child, my mother�s sister and her husband moved from Illinois, down to the hills of southeastern Kentucky. They settled in a small community of farmers, merchants, and coal miners, living up creeks, down hollows, and on mountainsides near the Cumberland River. Their tiny village had grown up around a block long �downtown� consisting of a general store, a couple of small markets, several �filling stations�, bars, saloons, and a movie theatre which announced its show times by loudly broadcasting honky-tonk or country music from outdoor speakers on the building. The single town street ran from the state highway, paralleling the river, and crossed over the wooden planks of a rattling bridge to the downtown. It continued past a mile or so of depression era, weatherworn houses, then disappeared around a bend which surely ended somewhere in a mountain hollow.

On the main street, just a few hundred feet past �downtown�, the red brick �First Baptist Church of Wallins Creek" lifted it�s steeple to the sky. It was complete with wide steps up to a center door, and a bell tower, which regularly called the parishioners to worship. Inside, oaken pews graced a short center isle, completed by a pump-style organ and upright piano with well-worn keys. A small balcony had been built in the back of the church, and beneath the sanctuary was a full basement which elevated the square building to a more prominent position. It was indeed the town�s centerpiece.

Not blessed with inside plumbing, the �facilities� were out in back of the church near a service station next door. In more recent years, a small red brick parsonage had been constructed behind the church, and that is where my aunt and uncle made their residence. He was, in those days, a �mountain missionary pastor.�

I don�t know if they had a regular salary or were supported by love offerings, but I do remember that their kitchen was abundantly stocked with home canned and fresh produce, baked goods and offerings from all the grateful members of the church.

When I was old enough, I was allowed to spend several weeks visiting each summer. I would travel the 300 or so miles from Louisville, via the old L & N Railroad.

The second small bedroom in the parsonage was where I slept. It was actually the �study�, which included a desk, several bookcases filled with wonderful Bibles and books, a lamp and a cozy daybed/couch.

This was where the love first blossomed.

Have you ever had the exquisite privilege of holding in your hands a book that has been so used that the very scent of the reader has been transferred to its pages? One whose vellum leaves are brown stained with the oil from fingers turning the pages time after time? One whose pages are ragged edged and ink smeared from note taking?

Crawling under the warm blanket at night, in the dimly lit study, I would lift the book to my face. I would hold it close enough to memorize the musky odor. I would thumb through the pages gently so as not to disturb them, and I knew I held someone�s treasure in my hands. Something that had been so incorporated into their lives as to transmit the essence of the being and the imprint of the owner. It was in that little room that I first began to love the Bible.

I didn�t know that this love would grow with the passage of years, and that the understanding and research of the pages of this book would be the lodestar and passion which would guide my life.

Over the years as an adult, it was not an uncommon thing for me to wear out a favorite copy of the Bible about every four years. It seemed a pattern. One of the reasons for the wear was that in teaching, I preferred to write as many of my notes as possible right onto the pages, and teach directly from �The Book�. It was as precious to me as my closest friend. I remember once when going through a horrible period in my life, my world falling apart around me, that I literally fell asleep holding it in my arms.

Regardless of how all this strikes you the reader, the point of my relating this to you is so you can understand the anger that hit me that day that I began to tell you about.

As you may or may not recall, about four years ago, I lost the ability to read, through macular degeneration. I suppose I would be declared legally blind. I have spent the last several years working through all this and making adjustments. I feel that I have adjusted pretty well. But as I was sitting in church on that particular Sunday, and the minister invited the congregation to �turn with him to a certain passage��I saw people all around me picking up the volume that I always loved to hold and read. The anger flashed.

It was short lived. It is not new to me. I have �The Book� in every available audio form. I have over sixty years of it on the inside of me. But I missed the freedom of being able to simply pick it up and turn through its pages.

A friend and I recently were sharing over lunch, how that sooner or later in life, we all seem to go through a period of change where nothing seems normal. Our circumstances are so uprooted or fall so short of our expectations that we feel lost in the darkness of abnormality and long for �normal�s� return.

But so often that does not happen. And this is when we begin to realize a new normal.

When there are no more flashes of anger or frustration, I will know that I have embraced my New Normal. And that�s a very good thing.

(*John 21:18 �The Message�)

Text � copyright 2003 - 2008 The Homespun Philosopher

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