Words in Red and the meaning of " this"...

              For a long time, my Wonderful Wife and I have been talking about Bible study in our house. We live about thirty five minutes from our Church and most of our friends who attend there.

             We would go on Sundays and often Wednesday evenings, her for book studies, the kids for Church school, and for me to catch up on the sermon I missed the Sunday before...

       I worked a rotating schedule were I had every other Sunday off. So the next Wednesday was catch up.This worked fairly well. It was a much more intimate setting, fewer people in a smaller room and our Pastor reviewing the previous sermon... There was lot of question and answer sections, prayers, praises and "what is God doing in your life right now" time.

                    I am a sermon kind of dude. Some people go to Church for the Worship, some for the fellowship, but I myself am a meat and potatoes, Sermon studying and dissecting guy...

         I sing uncomfortably, mostly in an attempted example for my children. I don't want them to feel self conscious ( like I do) about praising The Lord in song.

               Long ago I learned people praise in a hundred different ways, none much better or worse, than all the others. My preferred way is not song, but I do join in. Communal Praise is important, even if it is uncomfortable...

                 For a few years, Monday ( actually, still) was Men's night at our Church. It used to be " Men's Fraternity", three separate rounds of study of Biblical manhoods direction. I enjoyed those and the opportunity to get to know the names and faces of the guys I saw during the services...

                    My job changed recently. Better hours, weekends off, less money.

                        Not a bad trade, but we had to make some adjustments. Gas became quite an expense and travel was cut back. Sometimes we had to choose" something else" from the long list of " something else's", instead of another trip to our Church during the week.

                It is very hard to try to stay part of a body that you are physically distant from. Theoretically, it shouldn't be , but in practice it does limit your ability to fellowship, support and contribute.

                  We spoke to each other about the definition of local Church, my Wonderful Wife and I...We have over a dozen years invested in relationships with congregation and Pastors alike...

                                                   So how do we make this work???

                                    It is not the easiest of situations, sometimes...

                             So once again the idea of hosting a Bible study at our house, thirty five minutes from our Church, comes up. I am not a Bible study leading kind of guy. I would rather sit back, compare thoughts and ideas that are shared and plop in my personal two cents. Sit in the back. Think, ruminate...

                I share often that being a Christian, for me, is a struggle, on a lot of days. I'm beginning to realize that it probably is supposed to be, that if it felt like a walk in the park, I'm probably doing it wrong...

    If it were easy, I probably am either oblivious or in total denial of my nature...

       

                                       I met with a trusted and wiser friend over breakfast, as we discussed this idea. To be fair, I informed him, after the fact, that I had announced this study on Facebook the night before...

                          I tend to do things like that. Jump in and then get direction...

              Beg for forgiveness instead of asking permission...

                                   The " fire, aim, ready" type of plan...

                              It seems in my incorporation of this, I forgot to include a simple word, when running this by my Wonderful Wife. A little word really, practically inconsequential...

                  She heard " Thursday". I thought I included the word " this"...

                               It seems that is not as small of a word as I initially thought...

                                      God Bless my Wonderful Wife. I cannot count the confusions and disagreements we have had, thru the years, because I earnestly believed I stated a noun or verb or article that somehow stayed trapped in my head, while every other thing in my brains master plan escaped...

                                      Needless to say, she is a little excited..

                                      Maybe not " excited", actually, but some word much like that, with the same level of adrenaline...

                            I had volunteered her to put up a Facebook group and post it to both our pages.

Truthfully, she was o.k. with that, before the infamously and conspicuously absent " this".

                         But it is out there now.. I did not type in " this" when I posted it.

                              So, I must plan. Come up with an itinerary and a simple description of purpose; prepare pertinent questions and possible answers to a topic I have yet to decide, let alone finalize...

             Familiarize myself with a section of Scripture enough to legibly guide its discussion...

                              By Thursday...

                                   " This"..

            All I can say is that I'm glad this is not about me. It's not about how well or badly I plan and prepare. It's not dependent on how organized the house is. It doesn't matter whether the amount of people who show up ( if any) will require a one cup Kuerig, ten cup Mr. Coffee or the big stainless steel monstrosity we have in the space above our pantry...

           We planned this as non denominational, with no Churches doctrines . I love that our Church has a set of beliefs that we all agree on, when we join, that guides our purpose and worship. Communal agreement in a local Church is awesome and powerful..

           But I am hoping that all types of Christians will feel welcome and attend. Catholics. Baptists. Pentecostals... 

        That is why I would like to focus on "The Words in Red". 

                         No debates on differences; no attempts at conversions. 

                     Just a bunch of fellow Christians, a group of Gods kids, studying, worshipping and praising Him...

                  "For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there, in their midst".

                     

" Same Old Lang Syne"..

        I was putting in the oven, two pans of my Wonderful Wife's home made stuffed peppers ( sweet red bell peppers are her special touch), and I started thinking about Harry Chapin...

          So as I waited for dinner to cook, I searched You Tube for some of his concert performances.

               You gotta love You Tube, as you start nearing that mid century mark...

                  I watched him as he sang "Taxi", " W.O.L.D.", " Sequel" and "Thirty thousand pounds of bananas", "Cats in the Cradle" and of course " Flowers are Red"...

                      I listened to Harry Chapin a lot, growing up. He always seemed...real...

                          Him, Jim Croce, John Prine, Kris Kristofferson, Dan Fogelberg...

                                     I think I may now have a clue why I battled depression, those many years ago...

                                                But Harry...he also gave hope...

                       Long before benifits and causes were popular, he started campaigns against world hunger. His song " The shortest story" described the death and hopelessness of an African baby in a way nothing else ever has.

                         I have not read or heard of him described as a Christian, but in many ways, he was much more of a missionary than a troubadour...

                            I used to play guitar a long time ago.

            " Play" is being used extremely loosely in this description. I knew about ten chords and could not tell you which key they belonged in. Most of the time, I had tuned the guitar by ear, and it would be kind to say I was tone deaf.

                        These were my good qualities. It became much worse when the facts of the equation, like a complete and utter lack of rhythm were factored in...

                           I played guitar when I drank, usually at family "Hootinanies".

                My Uncle would play also, usually his guitar or "Git-box" tuned to a completely different key than mine and missing a string or two...

                                               We drank a lot, back then.

                             But many of my favorite memories were out of tune, also...

                                I remember nights with aunts and uncles, grandmothers and moms, cousins and assorted in-laws and out- laws...

                                     In most families, that is just a saying..

                              We sang George Jones and Hank Sr. We sang Conway Twitty and Patsy Cline. We sang John Prine, David Allen Coe and Hank Jr...

                        We sang Kenny Rogers and Harry Chapin...

                   All of us,somewhere ten percent, plus or minus, were three sheets to the wind...

                               There was a barrel outside, below the porch that we sometimes peed in.

My aunt Jamie, A.K.A. " Aunt Wilma" would go outside in the morning, to a quarter filled Rubber Maid trash can of urine.

                       I was not her favorite nephew. Many nights I would drive up to Corinth and steal her husband, leaving her with a houseful of children to tend too, as we drank our way from bar to bar.

               The great thing about Corinth bars was that when you got " barred"( not if, when) it was only for the night. We would crawl home to her screaming and pass out during her tantrums. Day two started at about 10:00 a.m., whiskey in the morning coffee. It was always at least a two day trip.

        Sometimes, I had to sleep in my car, but it was always at least two days...

                   We wrote songs. Some horrid, some halfway decent. I remember almost an entire night that my mom got along with everyone. Of course, three quarters of the way thru it, she demanded one of us drive her home. None of us were in any state to do that, so no one made a big deal of it when she went in our truck, in the middle of the night, to wait for someone to acquiesce her wishes...

                   She walked back in that October morning, shivering and angry. As we poured whiskey in the coffee, she got mad. If you drank that early inthe morning, she said you had a problem.

                                                                   Ya think?!?

                                    I have a cousin who was classically trained in violin. She laughed when we called it a fiddle. I remember her listening in a strange mixture of horror and awe. Eventually she just joined the absurdity and fiddled along...

                         The drinking quickly changed. The fun abandoned us, but the habits lagged behind.

                                            Those were some pretty cool nights...

                                        

                                                    I think about " Flowers are Red".

                                      It's a song about a child drawing flowers and trees using every color in his crayon pack and the teacher constantly chastising with the phrase " Flowers are red young man and green leaves are green. There's no need to see flowers any other way, than the way they always have been seen".

                            So the boy is beat down and sings those words to himself, as he colors and draws like his teacher taught. Eventually he goes to another classroom and the new teacher tries everything she can to get him to use all the other colors. The last stanza has him still coloring correctly, quietly singing the the first teachers words...

                     Harry Chapin protested common core forty years before it was created.

                        Most every songwriter that I listened to has passed. Truth be told, most died before I was twenty. As I perused You Tube, Dan Fogelberg popped up. I began watching one of his songs as he sat at a piano. I waited for him to move his hands on the keys, but it was just a still shot.

                                              In flowing script, below his picture it said

                                                                " 1951-2007 "

                                                                 We miss you...

                                 I never knew he died. For some strange reason, I was sad.

                                               I listened quietly to "Auld Lang Syne".