Reddy for This?

At the edge of night I’m a sailor’s delight,

At the crack of morning, a sailor’s warning,

I’m ketchup on a burger, sauce on spaghetti,

A souped-up vehicle for Andretti.

Bell pepper on a salad as a break from green,

I’m the nails and lips of a beauty queen.

I’m a fox’s coat, though hounds can’t see me,

Valentines and roses that make her feel dreamy.

I’m what men see when their anger boils

And with sweat and tears in all their toils.

I’m a phone a CEO or “prez” kept handy,

Or an apple, especially dipped in candy.

Cherry lifesavers or cinnamon “hots,”

I’m in slasher films by buckets and pots.

In old brick walls and Mississippi clay,

I’m striped all over Independence Day

On sunburnt bodies at your nearest beach

And blushing faces when preachers preach,

In a jell-o mold, on MacDonald’s barn,

Rubber galoshes and mittens of yarn,

I’m the ruby slippers Dorothy clicked

And the velvet cake whose frosting you licked.

On the Coke can you ought to have recycled

And the comb atop every hen that’s cackled,

I’m the shirt of a doomed security guard

And the phone booth outside Scotland Yard.

I’m Elmo’s fur, Thing One and Thing Two,

And the sexy dress on You-know-who!

  

Poinsettias, tulips and a drink named “Bull,”

Fire trucks and hydrants forever full,

Strawberries, M&M’s, dying embers,

Cabooses almost no one remembers,

Radio Flyer childhood wagons

And the fiery eyes and breath of dragons,

Stop signs, double decker buses,

Lucy’s hair over which she fusses,

I’m a long carpet at a world premiere,

And butcher’s meat making vegans jeer.

The hood on a wee girl who met a wolf,

And the caps sports sport when playing golf,

I’m watermelon flesh so juicy sweet

And adorn an old Schwinn’s bicycle seat.

A good bet on the roulette wheel,

I’m on robes to whose wearers many kneel.

The very tallest trees are named for me,

And Communist flags fit me to a tee.

I’m the petticoat Rhett Butler bought for Mammy

And the Happy Meal box you bought in Miami.

I’m comedians Skelton, Buttons and Foxx,

And for Boston fans,

what else?

I’m the Sox.

The Power Everyone Needs

People are fascinated by the subject of power. Solar power, electric power, nuclear power, the power of nature, psychological and political power, mental and spiritual power…various kinds of power fire our imaginations and draw our attention like a magnet.

Often we long for powers we don’t have. Who hasn’t wished for the power to fly, or to overcome a bully, or to achieve some impossible dream? It is this kind of wishing that has led to the creation of many myths and comic book heroes like Zeus or Hercules or Superman—ultra-human figures who possess super-powers mere mortals can only dream of.

If the Bible is to be believed, there is an all-important super-human ability that every person desperately needs, but that very few people seem to want. And that is the power to please our Creator.

Have you ever had a beloved pet, child, or spouse who always seemed to live only to please you? Whenever you came home he or she would come running up to greet you with a lavish display of joy and affection. He or she would go out of their way to bring you satisfaction or pleasure, making you feel like a person of royal privilege. As fellow creatures we can have a profound, pleasing effect on one another even in spite of our many imperfections.

But the Scriptures teach us that the infinite Lord of Heaven and earth is of a completely different order of being from those He has created. When this God created the universe, all he made was according to a holy standard of perfection that we can’t begin to imagine—a creation totally free of death, disease, defects and disobedience. When God surveyed all He’d fashioned and produced at the dawn of creation, He pronounced it “very good.” He gave every living thing the capacity to please, and to go on pleasing, the One who had made it.

This capacity, however, wasn’t a power that couldn’t be lost or forfeited. There were at least two kinds of creatures—angels and humans—who could lose the power to please God. Both of these beings were given a freedom of choice whereby their original perfect standing with the Maker could be cast aside and forfeited. The ability to please a perfect Creator had to be maintained by a life of perfect obedience, devotion and trust.

Satan and his demon followers chose to rebel against God because of pride and arrogance, and they were cast out of Heaven. Our first parents Adam and Eve chose to disobey God’s law and were driven out of Paradise here on earth. By rejecting God’s standard of perfect obedience, they were in effect rejecting God Himself.

As human beings who are used to life in a fallen, sinful world, we find it natural to wonder, “Why is God so hard to please?” “Why can’t He relent and lower His standards so that pleasing Him would be do-able?” “If He is a God of love, why can’t He simply forgive and forget?”

One way to understand this is to see all of God’s attributes as integral parts of His being. Everything God is, He is perfectly and to the infinite degree. He cannot just love someone “a little” or “half-way” because He IS love. He cannot give people “more” or “less” justice, for His is PERFECT justice. One cannot please God “a little bit” or “a bit more”…it’s either totally pleasing to Him, or not at all!

For our Creator to be satisfied with less than total obedience, trust and devotion would be like you and me being able to live without food and air. To survive without food or air we’d have to cease being human, and to be pleased with less than perfection, God would have to cease being God.

Obviously, then, imperfect human beings lack the power to please God. Paul puts it this way in Romans 3: “There is no one righteous, not even one…all have turned aside and have together become worthless. There is none who understands, no one who seeks God. There is no one who does good, not even one…For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” It is not just that we CHOOSE not to please God. The fact is that we lack the power of doing so, as well as the desire to please Him.

This situation is compounded by the fact that a right standing with God is necessary in order for any of us to escape eternal punishment for our sins. The Bible insists that without holiness “no one will see the Lord” and that our God will “by no means clear the guilty.”

“But,” we might wonder, “isn’t it possible to perform some kind of extra-credit assignment to counteract the curse of my sins? Can’t I earn my way into God’s pleasure if I work very, very hard?”

The Bible leaves no doubt that this is a false hope. Even when we are born, it teaches we are ALREADY starting out with a huge load of guilt in our deficit column. Our first representatives Adam and Eve saddled us with “original sin”—a sin nature that is in itself repugnant and offensive to God. Because they used their free will to choose to reject God, you and I inherited a nature that makes us incapable of perfect obedience from the start!

This sinful nature makes lying, cheating, lusting and hating as natural to us as hunger and thirst. Even if I wanted to perform good deeds to outweigh the bad, the bad deeds I’ve already done are still on my record. And God’s perfect justice demands eternal punishment for lawbreakers, no matter how small the infraction. Remember, rejecting even ONE of God’s laws is the same as rejecting God Himself.

Wow! What a bleak picture! And so it would be…apart from God’s grace.

There is one, and ONLY one, human being who has the power to please God. In fact, He has always had it, He has kept and maintained it, and—best of all—He has earned the right to share that awesome power with helpless, hopeless sinners like you and I.

The good news is that Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the God-man, came down from Heaven as a human baby, so that He could live a life of perfect law-keeping—pleasing God the Father and making Him (Jesus) the perfect sin-bearing sacrifice for hell-deserving sinners. “Christ died once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.”

Before He went to the cross to fulfill His mission and die for our sins, Jesus told His disciples, “I will send you another Comforter to be with you.” This other Comforter is the Holy Spirit. This awesome Person of the Godhead comes to live in those who believe in the Person and finished work of Jesus Christ. He changes their hearts in an act of regeneration—new birth!—and brings new Christians both the desire and the power to please God, by the grace that is found in their Savior Jesus.

I hope that you, as you read this and the Spirit-inspired words of the Gospel, will see Jesus Christ as the true Lord and Savior of your soul. He lives and rules today at God the Father’s right hand. He calls all people everywhere to repent and trust in His power to save them from sin and its just punishment. O sinner, call on Him today for forgiveness and eternal life!

Only this crucified, risen, ascended Savior can give sinners the power to please their Creator and enjoy Him forever.

Where Love Falls Short (part one)

“The power of love is a curious thing. Makes a strong man weep, makes another man sing. Turns a hawk to a little white dove. More than a feeling—that’s the power of love.” Huey Lewis sang these words, echoing the sentiments of Paul, John, George and Ringo: “All you need is love… love is all you need.” A myriad of other songwriters and philosophers have likewise made a virtual religion out of this thing called “love.”

Maybe we hate to admit it, but trying to reduce all the facets and goals of our world down to a single essence—even love—can be a risky thing. The danger that all philosophers down through history have faced is the fallacy of reductionism. We all might hope and pray for a simple, easy answer to the problems and complexities of life, and many claim to have found one. But such a claim can render the philosopher blind to the factors that fail to fit into that simple system.

All of us long after this thing we call love; it is truly a universal human goal. But a longing, if it is strong enough, can cause a kind of blindness—even a kind of madness. Take a deep and prolonged thirst for water. If a man is thirsty enough, for long enough, he might lose his reason. He might begin seeing mirages in the desert. Or if he’s adrift on the ocean, he might begin drinking the salt water all around him that will only make him thirstier or sicker.

The perfect philosophy, or the perfect religion, would account for all the particulars of our existence—not just the ones that give us feelings of euphoria or satisfy our longings. The person who says “I simply have love as my religion” has, perhaps unknowingly, made love more than it is, and religion less than it is.

Let’s begin with the term “love” itself. Left to itself, this word is a chameleon, colored by a person’s upbringing, exposure to culture, history, literature and so on. Does the love devotee limit this virtue to other people, or does she include animals, plants and inanimate things? How is love to be shaded and distributed, from “I love this TV program,” to “I love my cat,” to “I love my brother, my buddy, my spouse…?”

What about loving mankind? One’s country? One’s enemy? Does one’s love of large groups of people take precedence over loving one’s own family or one’s close neighbors or one’s countrymen? The mere word “love” cannot, when left in isolation from values like justice, mercy, devotion, forgiveness, humility, authority, truth, give us sufficient answers to these questions. This is why I suggest that “love” is too small a term to sum up anyone’s view of reality.

Now let’s move on to “religion.” As I understand the term in its purest form, it differs from “philosophy” in that it moves beyond intellectual, rational principles about reality, into the realm of devotion and reverence toward an ultimate or supreme reality. A religion normally claims answers not only for the “here and now” but also of the “before and hereafter”…eternal answers. It claims to give satisfactory answers to universal questions of origins, purpose, and destiny.

In effect, the one who claims that “Love is my religion” would have to be saying that the simple term “love” is the universal answer to all of mankind’s questions: “Why and how did we originate? If God exists, what does He want from us? What are we doing here? Is there any meaning to life, to morality, to our labors, hopes and dreams? Is there life after death? How will it all end? Do we have any say in our future destiny?” Obviously, “religion” is too large a term for the word “love” to stand alone as a satisfactory answer to its questions.

Perhaps the love-religionist would wish to modify his claim to: “All I believe in is a loving God,” or “Love is my God.” Indeed, there would seem to be some Bible verses that point to love as being synonymous with the Deity: John the Apostle writes that “he who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” Here we must take care not to jump to unwarranted conclusions. One may say “This chicken is our dinner,” for example, without saying that the chicken and the meal are synonyms for the same thing. There are parts of the animal that are decidedly not being served as food, and there are parts of the dinner that are unrelated to the bird in question. John’s point in saying “God is love” is that God is so much the embodiment of pure love, that no one who fails to love can claim an intimate relationship to Him. In our reading of the entirety of Scripture, it is clear that one could also make the statements: “God is holiness,” “God is joy,” “God is justice,” “God is wrath,” “God is truth,” etc., since He is the pure embodiment of all of those attributes as well. Those who claim to have a close bond with Him must also display holiness, joy, justice and all the rest, for their claim to be true.

How would a love-religionist deal with the brokenness of our world and the immorality and guilt of our human race? Sadly, there are broken, unloving and unlovely things and people all around us and, if we are honest, we find brokenness, hate and ugliness inside our own hearts and minds. Every human being who ever lived has had to face the fact that this world and the people in it are not what they ought to be. I might long after love, cry out for love, want to give love, even come to worship love as my god…but in my honest heart of hearts, I have to admit two painfully bitter truths about myself:

I am too selfish and too enslaved by my own desires to truly love as I ought.

AND

I am in no way deserving of the love I continually long after.

Only the most delusional person will make the claim that his or her love (given or received) is everything he or she longed or meant for it to be. Even the most sincere love we express or experience is riddled with imperfections like guilt, regret, dishonesty, selfishness, greed, lust, etc. There is a void that occurs in all human love—a gap that can’t be filled in with the simplistic old saw, “Nobody’s perfect.” Certainly, an imperfect love that is cracked and marred cannot occupy any pedestal we would wish to label “my God.”

This presents the love-worshiper with a “Catch-22” dilemma. If I were to respond, “Well, of course the world is broken and the people are unloving; that’s exactly why my devotion to love as the ideal is so necessary! Love is itself the answer to that brokenness. If we abandon all the religions out there and simply preach and demonstrate love, everything would eventually get better…wouldn’t it?”—if that was my response to a broken world and mankind, I’d be in for a big letdown. Even if I could convince every person in the world to agree with my viewpoint and make it everyone’s goal to love each other, all I’d succeed in doing would be to enlist billions of equally flawed and broken people to engage in a love equally flawed and broken.

(to be continued...)

A Forgotten Dirge

(note: This poem was written for my friends in the Plymouth Area Writers Workshop group, as an assigned piece based on research into the dread influenza epidemic of 1918. I'm interested in hearing from all who have heard about this plague which claimed upwards of 50 million lives.)

A Forgotten Dirge

That March of Eighteen, scarcely now recalled,

The fading chill of winter in the camps,

Unguessed mutations stalking through the ranks

Of men already drugged by war’s cruel trance…

And legions soon would fall like flies before

A silent foe who felled each gate and door.

In March of Eighteen, doctors here were few;

Like nurses, most had gone to tend the slain

Of Flanders Field and others far from home,

Their homes left nearly shieldless when he came:

The freak invader, sickle poised, to reap

One wave of victims with his breathless sleep.

The March of Eighteen cry sounds wide and clear

For volunteers to fly where needed most;

A mere trainee, my husband still in France,

I board the bus with others for the coast.

My Red Cross mask in place, I pay the fare,

For spring has come, and I must do my share.

This March of Eighteen: little do I know

How “three-day fever” will evolve and grow…

As troops deploy to Europe, the disease

Is quick to cross the cold, forbidding sea.

By summertime, the plague has ravaged Spain,

Thus, “Spanish flu” is now its traveling name.

O March of Eighteen! Funeral march indeed…

By fall a second wave has come to feed

Like locusts on the babes, the young, the hale,

While in our labs, we struggle to prevail.

For this tsunami hunts and slays at will—

A hungry swarm, an army primed to kill.

The March of Eighteen strides from shore to shore,

From pueblos west to igloos in the north.

The victims spewing red and turning blue,

The hospitals fill up and overflow…

And life expectancy drops twelve percent;

A twentieth die, but still it won’t relent.

Our March of Eighteen…could it soon be past?

November’s here—it’s Armistice at last!

War-weary soldiers home whom God has saved:

But from our glad embrace, comes one more Wave.

Not like the last, but direr than the first,

This wave of flu is, in its way, the worst.

This March of Eighteen trudges one year more,

Far less regarded than what came before…

We’re tired of the War…the death…the flu…

We’re eager to begin our lives anew.

So, with my man, I turn from death…to dreams,

Where no invader writes his bitter themes.

Now, March of Eighteen’s drum is scarcely heard;

Our children, grown who hear nary a word

Of the monster who left fifty millions dead.

We sang them myths and fairy tales instead.

Like monkey-evils, never said, heard, seen…

Praying never to recall March of Eighteen.

Mark N. Aikins

August 1, 2013

Sneak Peak at the Sequel...

One

Heavenforge

Scott Bowen had neither the body nor the temperament of a planetary explorer, but here he was leading a squad of terraform huskies across the face of a bleak volcanic waste a dozen v-jumps away from anywhere he’d be ready to call civilized.

This expedition wasn’t merely precipitous, in his opinion. It was downright stupid. But just because his parents had been in the colonial charter group that had set foot on Heavenforge fifty years ago, the mantle of hardy leadership had been laid on his shoulders. Despite his paunch and his sedentary preferences as to lifestyle, people looked up to him and treated him with a kind of reverential awe. In his more sanguine moments, he imagined that they saw some semblance of his forebears’ greatness beneath his flabby exterior.

In his honest moments, he realized he was just too much of a coward to admit to people how cowardly he was.

The environment suits the squad wore were ancient and cumbersome. As they picked their way through the craggy landscape, Bowen regretted more and more that they had left the city dome by way of a surface tracker instead of a shuttle. The signals they were following had seemed to originate among the stony columns of the eastern range, making a shuttle landing out of the question. But the wheels of the tracker began creaking and showing other signs of strain far earlier than planned and, naturally, Colin Dutko had insisted on continuing their search on foot.

Doctor Dutko was almost as volatile, to Bowen’s mind, as the planet itself. In the laboratory he was certainly a stable, quite competent scientist—one on whom the terraformers both here and on the other Spiral Gap worlds could solidly rely. But those who knew him well always hesitated to include him when a need for fieldwork arose. It was then that Colin became a risk-taking firecracker. He was one of those people who never were satisfied merely to limit their passion to their area of true expertise. Rather, he fancied himself a Renaissance man, equal to any and every task.

“Carefully…carefully, men,” Bowen said for the dozenth time. Dutko was a hundred meters ahead of the rest of them, but Bowen was hanged if the fool’s intrepidity would goad him into harebrained antics out here in the middle of nowhere. Whatever the beefier members of their squad thought of him, at least they had the grace to hang back with him, likely pretending they believed his caution was due to his concern for his men and not primarily for himself.

Tremors on Heavenforge’s surface were a fact of life. Bowen sent up involuntary prayers, in spite of the FANU doctrines he learned so well as a youngster, whenever the gritty soil began shaking under his wobbly legs. He longed for the reassuring feel of plasticrete beneath his feet, a comforting sensation that felt like another life entirely in his memory, though they’d left the safety of Petra City’s dome scarcely two hours before.

Another tremor made its way up his wide-spaced legs and again his eyes shut tight until it passed—not quite as bad or as long as the last one had been. “Careful, fellas. Everyone okay?”  He twisted around and took advantage of the tremor to rest and stretch while he took a head count. Twelve other suited figures fanned out in a curving line down the stony incline behind him. All twelve had their hands raised in reply to Bowen’s question, showing him that their audio implants were functioning properly. When he turned back to face uphill, he’d lost sight of Dutko.

“Colin! Colin? You still with us?” He tried his best to keep his voice confident and calm in spite of his panting and perspiration. 

“I read you, Scott. Hurry on up here, I found something interesting,” came Dutko’s clipped voice in reply. Doctor Dutko had a peculiar accent that Bowen never had quite identified as anywhere earthly. Perhaps it was some manner of speech he’d picked up on Mars or the Jovian system before he’d emigrated.

Doggedly, Bowen waved a beckoning arm ahead and plodded on. “We’re coming,” he puffed, “as fast as we can…” another puff, “given this terrain.” Something interesting? What was there that was so fascinating in this endless waste? Unless…

“Colin, have you found the source of the signals? The mechanism? What is it? Can you describe it?”

“No, there’s no mechanism here, but there seems to be a crater of some kind.”

“There’s nothing like that on our maps, is there?”

“You’re right. That’s what makes it uncanny. You’ll have to see it and judge for yourself, but it looks very recent.”

“Meteor impact, you think?” Bowen was feeling interested despite his fatigue.

“Nothing like that. More like an excavation that left no debris behind. Never seen anything like it.”

“I don’t like this, Colin. You better make your way back to us and we’ll check it out together.” Bowen would have been scratching his head if his helmet would’ve allowed it. This wasn’t what he’d expected at all. The intermittent signals they’d received in the Dome had indicated a fallen satellite or a soft-landed drone of some kind, but an excavated crater meant that there were definitely people involved. And unidentified, unauthorized people out here in the wilds could only mean trouble. Trouble that Scott Bowen had no intention of dealing with.

“Do you copy, Colin?”

Silence.

“Doctor Dutko, did you copy? Return to the squad. Copy that?”

Still there was only silence.

Fine. This was just fine. Leave it to Do-it-or-die Dutko to end up with a faulty com link at a time like this. Scott Bowen felt the combined stares of the twelve huskies behind him awaiting his next move. He felt frozen in his boots.

As inaudibly as possible, Bowen heaved a frustrated sigh. “Keltig! Beesom! Charge your weapons and come with me. The rest of you await my signal to proceed. We’ll make sure the good doctor is okay. Forrest, you’re in charge of the group while I’m gone. Copy that?” Forrest gave him the thumbs-up and the two terraformers he’d summoned advanced with blasters at the ready.

“Keltig, which heading are we making for?” Bowen asked, just to be sure. When he’d last seen Dutko, he was uncertain of what part of the ridge ahead he’d been standing on. Keltig pointed at a low outcropping about ten degrees to their left. Off the three of them trudged.

“Colin Dutko, do you read me?” Bowen called. They were fifty meters from the ridge.  “Doctor Dutko, please respond.”

Forty meters.

“Colin, come in. Do you copy?”

At twenty meters Bowen motioned to his armed companions that they fan out to the right and left before they crested the ridge. 

He checked the power gauge on his own small shock emitter and set it on its full dispersal setting. 

What was he doing here? Was he crazy? or just too cowardly to admit…

“Colin!” They had stepped onto the ridge and there was the crater.

The depression in the rock surface was perfectly round, like a meticulously sliced section of a sphere, incredibly smooth, with no residual debris around it, without even any dust perceivable at this distance. The crater was about fifty yards ahead, about thirty yards across…

…and the environment-suited figure of a man was lying exactly at its center.

“Colin! Colin, do you hear me?” Bowen tried to rush ahead, but one of the others was at his side holding him back. “Let go of me, blast you! He’s hurt!”

“But we don’t know what happened here, Mr. Bowen—we ought to make sure it’s safe before you go down there.” It was Beesom. Keltig was several yards ahead, scanning the area with his blaster in firing position. Bowen strained to get free, but Beesom was brawnier and his grip was unyielding. “At least get more men up here, sir. Until we know what we’re up against.” 

Bowen, nodding, relented and spoke clearly with his eyes still fixed on the human form in the crater. “Forrest, get the rest of the men up here. Doctor Dutko is…something is wrong and he might need medical attention. We need to make sure this area is secure. Everyone, power up your weapons and fan out your approach.”

“Yes sir, we’re on our way,” Forrest replied.

It was another ten unendurable minutes before the dozen men were deployed at points around the crater like figures on a crazy clock face. Bowen half-slid and half-stepped down the side of the bowl shape and made his way to the man form lying there. It was curled in a semi-fetal position with legs partially tucked upward and with arms slightly to the sides. The faceplate of the helmet was cocked at an angle toward the ground so that Bowen had to twist the head to see inside. When he did so, he caught his breath.

Tiny red specks covered Dutko’s face, as if a fine mist of blood had been sprayed upon it with an atomizer.

And one second later, it dawned on Bowen that that is exactly what he was looking at.  Drops of blood.

Dutko’s face showed no sign of pain or stress. It was passive, almost serene, and the body was relaxed. Absolutely limp. Gently, Bowen reached around his shoulders, lifted them slightly and shook them.

As if in answer, a planet-tremor began once again, coursing up from the crater’s floor, perhaps somehow magnified by the shape of the depression. Bowen felt the rattle and clatter of Dutko’s helmet against the stone-hard ground. Slowly, the tongue protruded from the seemingly sleeping face. It licked several of the bloody drops off the corners of his mouth. The mouth began to smile.

And then, all at once, the eyes popped open, causing Bowen to cry out in fright.

“Colin! My gods, what a relief! Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

“Yes, Scott…” Dutko’s voice seemed far away. “My gods…your gods…we all…we are all…gods.” The eyes closed with beatific bliss on the bloody face. “We are all gods…saved… saved by the blood.”  

Not Alone

"We read to know that we are not alone." One of C.S. Lewis's students told him this, supposedly. I imagine this is a good place to start when we speak of writing, as well.

In Genesis One, God's first word of malediction was: "It is not good for man to be alone." He created woman, we are told, basically to address this problem. But, as we all know, the scourge of loneliness still plagues us as both men and women. Both as a race and as individuals (and in every kind of grouping in between), we find ourselves isolated, conflicted, dissatisfied, lonely, misunderstood, messed up and confused.

Throughout our lives, by our efforts of industry and creativity, we all seek to define ourselves and give our existence a sense of purpose and dignity. Our living spaces, photo albums, dens and trophy cases are testimonies to our hunger for both belonging and significance. On the one hand we seek acceptance and inclusion. On the other, we hope to stand out from the group and achieve some kind of uniqueness.

While we long to join ourselves to a noble, worthy cause that gives us a reason to be...we find in our souls an equally deep longing to become our own cause: someone who emerges from the masses and can inspire others to follow us. Writing is but one example of this longing and impulse.

When I write, I am seeking to follow and please and fit in with the millions of scribblers and readers who have gone before and presently exist. At the same time, my hope is that I might somehow add to or surpass what others have written, and thereby earn a level of special recognition and achievement. How does one best perform this balancing act--pleasing the demands and expectations of the crowd, while being fresh and unique, perhaps touching the hem of greatness?

As a believer, I accept as fact that a supreme, divine Being has authored this world, composing it of innumerable individuals, all of whom are unique in some way, each of whom has a unique story to tell. But every individual saga only finds expression as it emerges from, or enters into, the never-ending story of the whole. As each isolated life becomes a shared life.

It seems that the more I, as a writer, come out of my seclusion to sample and savor the shared stream of humanity, the more equipped I find myself to have a truthful, beautiful, beneficial impact on others--approaching greatness in what I write.

If it is true that "I read to know that I'm not alone," can it also be that I write, because I already know I'm not alone?

MNA 7/8/13

Beyond the Blue

Blue skies smilin’ at me…Nothin’ but blue skies do I see…Never saw the sun shinin’ so bright…Never saw things goin’ so right…Noticin’ the days hurryin’ by…

When you’re in love—

            Judd couldn’t get those hateful words out of his head. Hard as he tried, they stuck there like flies to sticky-paper in the cow shed. Judd had heard that song at the picture show a week back. Some Yankee dude name of Berlin had wrote them—some white city feller with no notion at all…

            Judd stopped just long enough to catch his breath and mop his brow. A merciless sun was smiling down on his neck today. A fierce sun halfway through its turtle-slow march across an empty sky.

            Grandpappy told him about the slave days on the plantation, when the workers would pray and pray for rain. A rainless April might be welcomed by the white folks as a chance for long rides and picnics in the countryside. But the negroes in bondage knew too well that no rain meant harder times busting the sod, possibly a meager harvest to come, and ill-tempered masters taking it out on the slaves.

            Of course, Judd was aware that sunshine was necessary for his crops to flourish here on his little spread. His pappy had signed the farm over to him and Tabitha when they were still in their twenties. Then he and Judd’s mama had followed the call to become missionaries someplace over in Africa. They prayed a long, fervent prayer over Judd and Tabby before they departed—including a humble request that the good Lord would send them sunshine and rain in their proper seasons…

            Well, Judd thought sourly, at least half of that plea had been granted, and in abundance!

            He trudged behind the team for another hour and a half, then unhitched them from the plow and led them over to the feed trough beside the barn. As the mules ate Judd peered slowly round at the horizon, not very expectantly. His lack of hope would go undisturbed for another day. Not a puff of cloud.

            Retreating from the empty sky, he clomped up the front steps and into his empty house. He didn’t pause in the sitting room to glance at the decorative relics of Tabby’s presence. In the year since she had left him, Judd had spent plenty of stolen moments he could little afford to spend, gazing at her handmade doilies, her china figurines, her small bits of antique furniture—each treasure marked by her skill, thrift and affection. By this time, these things haunted Judd rather than drew his reflection.

            He hurried through to the kitchen, began scavenging for something to still his growling stomach. Slim pickin’s, he thought grimly. He hadn’t been to town to stock up for a month or more. Even the coffee can and the sugar tin were nothing but leavings. Ruefully, Judd stared over at the narrow pantry door, knowing that it led to yet another sanctuary of painful memories. Well, what the heck? He’d hurry in there, grab something, then hurry out.

            Flinging open the door, he pulled the light cord and scanned the floor-to-ceiling rows of dusty jars. Each jar contained evidence of his wife’s boundless energy, expended each year in her vegetable patch and tiny orchard of less-than-generous fruit trees. Breathing hard and blinking in the light of the bare hanging bulb, Judd grabbed the nearest jar of pickled eggs from a chest-high shelf. Before he could withdraw and slam the door, he noticed something fluttering to the floor. Without thinking he stooped and scooped it up.

            It was a small leaflet with Bible verses printed on it. Judd had to think back a good piece to remember its origin. But the memory was there. It stuck up in the sod of his childhood like a stubborn thistle spike. He and Pappy and Mama had gone to the camp meeting over in Glen County to hear an old traveling preacher. As they took seats on one of the rude wooden benches planted in the sawdust, a half dozen young volunteers were handing out the little leaflets.

            A pretty girl he’d never met pressed one into Judd’s hand and, for a second, their hands made contact.

            Many things happened that night. He and his folks learned about salvation…Mama and Pappy began their journey that would lead them to Africa…and that pretty girl captured Judd’s heart for all time.

            Judd turned the little paper thing over and over in his callused hands. Besides the verses from the Book of Romans telling the reader how to get saved, there was a song printed on the back. But it was in the careful, artful handwriting of Tabitha Dawn Farrell—Tabby, who had smiled at him, not like a merciless blue sky, but like a merciful princess. Tabby, who had charmed and thrilled and married and served and loved…and had left him for her heavenly home one year ago.

            As Judd read the words, the clouds burst and the tears fell like rain:

I’ve got a home in gloryland that outshines the sun… I’ve got a home in gloryland that outshines the sun… I’ve got a home in gloryland that outshines the sun…

Way beyond the blue.

Do Lord, O do Lord, O do remember me… Do Lord, O do Lord, O do remember me… Do Lord, O do Lord, O do remember me…Way beyond the blue.