This fossil
embedded, merged
cannot break free
of the rock
on its own.
If fossils could feel
this one would
cry for freedom
simply to exist
independent
of ancient stone.
Merged
in a by-gone era
this once living spirit
now bears elements
of another.
What outside force
could free the fossil
without breaking it?
Without destroying the stone ?
That traffic is an illusion
produced by human ingenuity
brilliant ignorance of true progress
a mesmerizing whoosh
hidden by trees.
Here
on this creek
where water moves lazy-like
cicada songs are real
a snorting deer
tweeter tweeters
fading light flecks
over moss-covered rocks
brown earth banks
downed branches
a pale sky.
Life happens here
recycled and upcycled
older than time
younger than tomorrow
unending, unending, unending
let me be here
at the edge of nowhere
the heart of everywhere
this—
this is real.
Lifted
beyond Northern Lights
where clouds are pink ice
I shoot
heavenward
from earth mud
streaking
like a star
launched upward.
I soar
past gray folk
on park benches.
Freely
flying away.
Away.
Away.
My grandfather was born in the early 1900s in a school for “Coloreds” and was delivered by local African-American women who were friends and neighbors of his parents. His father was half-Mexican and maybe they were the only Mexican family in Kentucky at that time in history. I really don’t know. I say he was half-Mexican because his father, who may have been born in South America, actually grew up in Mexico and came here as an orphan at the close of the Mexican-American War with a soldier named James. My great-grandmother died in childbirth, died right there in that school building, or at least that’s what the birth record says. Later, his father remarried a woman who was said to be half-Cherokee and she raised my grandfather. My dad would later be born in a Share Cropper’s shack that had once served as a slave cabin, about two miles up the road.
I have heard all of my life how my dad considered the Garnet girls to be his “sisters,” and how when their daddy was dying he sent word down the hill for Daddy to bring his guitar and come “sing him home.” So Daddy did. He took his guitar to “Uncle’s” house and sang to him just before he died. In the 1950s my dad’s siblings attended the Rosenwald School that replaced the schoolhouse where their father was born. They may have been the only “White” kids in the school at that time. I never understood any of this as a child. All I knew was that the people living in that community were my dad’s friends.
Seems like that’s the way it should always be, people just being good to each other. Some of the people in the community were my dad’s friends up until the day they died. Most of them passed away before Daddy. I still remember Billy in his wild colored clothes catching a ride into town with Daddy on Saturdays and Cat that Daddy hung around sometimes. The Gradys, the Dudleys, the Franklins and Richards from Gradyville and Jones Chapel Road, from Flatwoods—they were all friends and family.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Cumberland-Plateau
In his book, Upper Cumberland Country, William Lynwood Montel talks about a culture that permeates Northern Tennessee and parts of Kentucky that stretches from Adair County at the edge of the Pennyroyal Region across Russell, Casey, Pulaski, Wayne, Clinton, Cumberland and eastward to the Cumberland Gap and on down into Tennessee. He calls this region the Upper Cumberland and says that in this region people are “wed to the land.” I suppose one could say that for those of us who’s ancestors arrived during the 1700 and 1800s , the land is sacred. There is a “spirit” in this place that has been here since long before the first European settlers arrived and once you fall in love with this land, it remains with you forever, no matter how far you travel. It calls you back. In that sense, those of us who understand the richness and the history of this place and what it meant to our ancestors, truly are wed to the land. The land which now forms the border between Kentucky and Tennessee was once the southwestern border of North Carolina and Virginia. Eventually, Tennessee and Kentucky were carved out of Virginia and North Carolina. If Virginia is Kentucky’s mother, then North Carolina is her father and Tennessee is her sister.
This region is known as the Cumberland Plateau which technically encompasses areas of West Virginia, and Alabama, as well. The river that flows through this land is now called the Cumberland, but that was not always the case. Once it was called Wasioto by the Shawnee men, women, and children who LIVED there (not just hunted or camped but LIVED). Wasioto was home to Mound Builders before the Shawnee. The river was sacred to all tribes in the area. One legend has it that there was a terrible massacre there when an encampment of Cherokee women and children were slaughtered at Yahoo Falls near what is now the Kentucky/Tennessee border.
In the late 1700 and early to mid1800s people settled along the Cumberland River in such places as Hawkins, Hancock, Scott, Fentress and Campbell counties in Tennessee and of course, there were no state lines drawn, so some of these families also settled in what is now Leslie, Harlan, Pulaski, Wayne, Clinton, Cumberland, Adair, Russell, Johnson, McGoffin, Whitley, McQueary, Bell, Knox, Laurel, Floyd, Johnson, Perry, Knott, and Casey counties in Kentucky. They came from the New River area of Virginia and North Carolina, many of which were descendants of the White Top Band of Sizemore Indians, some of which are documented as old “Cheraw” or remnants of the Saura people who had been decimated by smallpox. Other were documented as having been born at Fort Christana and a place called Catawba Town. They were a mixture of Tutelo, Saponi, Catawba, Saura and other tribes of the area which had come together due to being decimated by diseases brought over from Europe (mainly Smallpox) for which they had no immunity. Some had Algonquian ties, as well. In time, many of them referred to themselves as “Cherokee” because Cherokee became synonymous with “Indians from the Southeastern U.S.” And, in fact, many of these families did have people of mixed Cherokee, Shawnee, Chickasaw, Creek, and Algonquian tribes marry into their lines.
As their freedoms and rights dwindled in Virginia and the Carolinas, as their lands were stolen, they pushed westward into the mountains, cliffs, caves, valleys, swamps, and gorges of the Cumberland Plateau. They were seeking a place just “to be.”
Thanks to the Racial Integrity Act in Virginia that affected all the surrounding areas, census takers labeled these people based on their own impressions of them. There was a deliberate effort to eradicate the “Indians” by making them either White citizens or designating them as “Mulattos” or “Free People of Color.” It was a time period where being White meant you got to keep your family together, own land and vote. Being mulatto meant you got to live “free,” but you had no legal rights and being Indian meant you didn’t exists unless you agreed to go to a concentration camp (well, they were called Reservations but they were the equivalent of concentration camps.) So, it came to be that Kentucky, once a part of Virginia and North Carolina, had “NO INDIANS.” Of course not, they were politically ripped asunder, buried, ignored, and forgotten.
Due to their inability to point to themselves on Cherokee rolls, they were often denied tribal membership, not because they were not Native American but because they were not documented Cherokee. The descendants of these people make up much of the Upper Cumberland area today. They handed down legends, year after year, generation after generation, of a great-grandmother or great-grandfather who was “Indian.” Some of them remembered they were not Cherokee and used terms like Blackfeet, but many genuinely believed they were Cherokee because it was the only name they had heard repeated. They were made fun of and accused of being wannabe Indians, but the truth is that their heritage was stolen through genocide, sometimes accidental, sometimes on purpose, and in time, they assimilated and became “White” or “Black” just like the government had always wanted them to do.
Sizemore Indians and their kinfolk and neighbors—they often traveled in groups from the same areas, being a mixture of multiple Native branches and Scotch-Irish, Quakers, French and German–and their neighbors settled along the Cumberland River in what is now southern Kentucky and Northern Tennessee. Family names included Riddles, Starnes/Stearns, Bowman, Bolin/Bowling/Bollin, Cox, Wallen, Leach, Harris, Choate, Turner, Gipson, Sizemore, Greene, Smith, Marsh, Moore, Collins, Mullins, Phelps, Phipps, Tallant, Ramsey, Cooper, Harmon, Neal/Neil, Denny, Downey, Wells, Brown, Graham, Blevins, Fields, Fugate, White, Adams, and more.
Now back to the Cumberland River itself, Wasioto is almost 700 miles long and drains from a whopping 18,000 square miles! Multiple rivers and streams flow into the Cumberland River including the Red River, Big South Fork and others. At one point there is only about 2.8 miles of land between the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers (which is fed by the Holston River, flowing out of what is now North Carolina and the French Broad River.)
The Cumberland Plateau, the world’s longest hardwood forested plateau, is home to many plants and animals found nowhere else.
The Cumberland Plateau rises more than 1,000 feet above the Tennessee River Valley to a vast tableland of sandstone and shale dating as far back as 500 million years. The rivers of this region, have eroded away the softer rock beneath, leaving rock houses (natural bridges), caverns, cliffs and caves along the river and stream beds. “From Williamsburg, Ky., above the falls, to the Kentucky–Tennessee state line, the Cumberland crosses a highland bench in the Cumberland Plateau and flows in a gorge between cliffs 300–400 feet (90–120 m) high.” (encyclopedia Britannica)
In 1952, Wolf Creek Dam was built to create Lake Cumberland, caves with petroglyphs (according to older local residents that I’ve interviewed) were flooded, never to be explored again. The community of Rowena as evacuated and flooded. The graves were dug up and moved to the nearby Watauga community and the community’s official records were sent to Burnside, Kentucky, a few miles upstream. Wolf Creek Dam is the 25th largest of its kind in the United States and Lake Cumberland is over 100 miles long and over a mile wide. It is the 9th largest lake in the U.S. and the larges man-made. It has a capacity of 6,100,000 acre-feet of water, enough to cover all of Kentucky in 3” of water.
Over the years the dam has had a multitude of problems and issues, including that fact that 19 years after it was built, sinkholes developed around the electrical grid near the base of the dam and caused a near failure of the dam. In the late 1960s, liquid concrete was pumped into the dam but that didn’t stop the leaks, so in the 1970s a concrete wall was inserted in the earthen part of the dam, but that didn’t work, either. Uncontrollable seepage continued all the way up until 2005 when the dam was on the verge of collapsing and obliterating the town of Burkesville, Kentucky. In 2007, the lake was lowered to 40 feet and a seven-year, $309,000,000 rehabilitation of the dam included a longer, deeper wall built into the dam’s earthen section. This wall, completed in 2014, is two feet thick and extends 300 feet into the limestone base. The dam is now considered safe by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. However, they say if the dam were being built today, it would not be built in its current area due to the nature of limestone and karst formations.
Not far from Wolf Creek Dam is the Dale Hollow Dam which forms Dale Hollow Lake. Clinton County, Kentucky, sits between the two lakes with Dale Hollow to the south and Lake Cumberland to the North.
Rich in history, beautiful beyond belief, wild and rugged, a tremendous area for trout fishing, home to abundant wildlife and trees found nowhere else in the world, the Cumberland River and surrounding plateau have their enemies, TRASH, DEBRIS, and GRAFFITI. The trash is a result of human carelessness, laziness, and ignorance. The debris is a result of homes too close to the riverbanks and the graffiti is a result of stupidity and ignorance. There’s just no other way to phrase that one. I end this little essay with a plea, if you swim the waters, or fish, or kayak or go white water rafting, if you live on the banks, or go on a picnic or a hike or do anything at all, please, please and PLEASE pick up your trash and don’t leave a mess behind you. It is a karst landscape which means everything finds its ways into the streams, caves, earth and waterways.
Original Photos:
Cumberland Falls, first three photos by Scott Harris, fourth photo by Darlene Campbell
Big South Fork, photos by Darlene Campbell
Rock House Bottom/aka: Creelsboro Arch and Cumberland River, photos by Darlene Campbell
Left: Adair County, Kentucky, photo by Darlene Campbell. Left Paintsville, Kentucky in Johnson County, photo by Darlene Campbell and above: Old PennsStore in Casey County (part of the store and surrounding property are in Boyle and Marion Counties, as well.)
SOURCES:
https://www.britannica.com/place/Cumberland-River
https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/USA/tennessee_map.htm
https://sherpaguides.com/tennessee/upper_cumberland_plateau/
Explore Cumberland Plateau [dc2]
Upper Cumberland Country by William Lynwood Montell–1993 University of Mississippi Press, Mississippi
Life in These River Hills by Mary Etta Neal–2006, Old Seventy Creek Press, Albany, Kentucky
A Wandering Tribe: Dispersal of the Catawba Nation 1800 to 1900 by Steven “Pony” Hill | 2016–Backntyme Publishing, Crofton, Kentucky
Cherokee by Blood, Volume 1, Applications 1-1550 Paperback – December 30, 2019; Jerry S. Wright
History of the Cherokee Indians by Emmett Starr, originally published 1929. Now available here: https://www.amazon.com/History-Cherokee-Indians-Legends-Folklore/dp/0806317299/ref=pd_sbs_2/134-6893923-8755815?pd_rd_w=wyVES&pf_rd_p=f8e24c42-8be0-4374-84aa-bb08fd897453&pf_rd_r=X9PQGF4XQX1AZ8B6EJ4P&pd_rd_r=b0e52a4a-86f2-47e4-9ddb-48951c67f087&pd_rd_wg=fFXL2&pd_rd_i=0806317299&psc=1
I, Dragonfly
I skirt above this pond
Skimming the surface
Landing for a blink
On a cattail
On a willow branch
Then flit again
Clear wings
Catching light
Not lingering long
Ninety degrees
in dry September fields
all day long I lift
eighty pounds of green.
I am tiger lily dust
moistened from dew within,
my cocoa hair
streaked with caramel strands.
Scarred, calloused hands
twice their age,
touched by manly nails,
hoist these sacred stalks
until sinewy limbs
longing for apple tree shade
send me to drink divine
colorless warmth.
When the sky people
with their glory eyes
peep through the holes
in their velvet blanket
I fall clean
upon fresh sheets
and make love
to my peace.
*NOTE: I spent much of my youth working the tobacco fields of southern Kentucky. The work was hard and at the end of those summer days, especially the ones in September, when the fields were dry and the sky clear blue, there was nothing so inviting as a bath and a bed with clean sheets. For those who have worked the tobacco fields, you know. For those who haven’t, you have this poem to tell you a little of what it was like. This was life in Kentucky when I was young.
by Nochipa (aka, Darlene)
Pen Shells
Second Place, October 2007
Judged by E. Ethelbert Miller
Tell me what is more beautiful
than strength of a life
well-lived.
My hands, lean and firm,
are scarred by
youthful poverty.
while my sculpted arms,
sinewy and brown,
were chiseled by a farmer’s hoe
and these legs, are solid
and shapely, strong
as trees grown from hill-treading
My wit is sharp
as tobacco spears
from traps of star-dream slayers
while my heart beats steady
for hundreds of children
who listened to my song.
So, now that you know
I am not a T.V. woman-child,
am I less lovely?
Eagle Kind
Have I not given
the best of my years
days of my innocence
pureness of my heart
to you?
Have I not walked through
the Valley of the Shadow of Death
with you
more than once?
More than twice?
Have I not laughed
and cried and prayed
with you
at you
for you?
Will you not
grant me freedom
to fly
to spread my wings
over the world?
To be only
me?
Do you not know
that the cry for autonomy
has little to do
with things you have done
or said
or felt?
This longing
is only about
a need in my soul
a need to soar.
Not a lack
on your part.
No fallacy.
No blame.
No fault.
I am simply
of eagle-kind.
Soaring is what we
are made for.
My love is not diminished
yet, unless, I spread
these wings
I will die
in my nest.
“Every bird needs to fly just once.” From Looking for Pork Chop McQuade
Lavender child
you glided into this world
graceful lady
on a lotus pond
spreading peace.
Your tiny hands
grew into slender ivory
as you floated
upon time
emerging from laughter
to become
a moon dancer
elegant lover of fairies
gazer of stars.
With gentleness
more fragile than
hummingbird wings.
Calm storm chaser,
I watch.
I wonder.
When autumn comes
what will your springtime
memories be?
Awake with the morning to a smooth day.
Maker of Days
hiyi means thank you.
Arise with the dawn
feel its warmth on your face
sun on your skin.
Everlasting Provider
hiyi means thank you.
Run like a new fawn
like a butterfly
wind lifting your wings
until your spirit soars
until it sings.
Remember, myself
this day is never again
when the sun sets
it is a journeying
friend.
Hiyi means
thank you.
I am a child in rain
with hands outstretched,
catching droplets
as they fall.
I run.
Dance.
Sing.
Take an old umbrella
spin and whirl
laugh out loud
let water run
down my face
into my shoes
baptizing
my soul
brand new.
Awake with the morning
to a smooth day.
Maker of Days, hiyi.
Arise with the dawn
feel its warmth on your face
sun on your skin.
Everlasting Provider, hiyi.
Run like a new fawn
like a butterfly
wind lifting your wings
until your spirit soars
until it sings.
Remember, myself,
this day shall never be again
when the sun sets
it is but a lost
friend.
THE DREAM
I stuck my hand in a rainbow
the colors got all over me
silver and blue, fuchsia and red.
They touched the child in my mind
gave life to magic inside
this power of light
penetrated a tree
then kissed the ground
at my feet.
I looked behind me and
saw forever, all which has been
and what is yet to be.
Then I smiled to know
I am forever young yet
always old
that mortality is temporal
life eternal.
This essence of me will walk
beneath the sun
when I am dust
only ashes remaining of now
a golden sun will rise
and I will always be
just who I am.
Photo by John Cahil Rom on Pexels.com
I believe there are only two basic emotions that exist in the world; LOVE and FEAR and that all others — happiness, jealousy, anger, sympathy, compassion, etc. are manifestations of whichever one we are walking in at the moment. I believe that it is impossible to act from fear and love at the same time.
If an action is intended to harm another, either physically, emotionally, mentally, financially, socially or spiritually, it’s motivated by fear. Sometimes, it’s a fear of being wrong about something, like politics or religion. The fear is that if we are wrong about one thing, then somehow our entire universe and grasp on reality will come undone. Sometimes, it’s a fear of change, because people fear the future or that the past will repeat itself. Some people are the opposite and fear a life of boredom and sameness. Some people fear a lack of control. Others fear being controlled. Sometimes, it’s a fear of being “without,” meaning having less financially or of being poor. Sometimes people fear those of another religion, race or ethnicity. Sometimes people fear getting older while others fear dying young. Some fear they will never have a relationship while others fear commitment. Ultimately, most are afraid of death, yet everyone must face it.
Some people have been raised up in fear, believing they might not be as good as other people, so they constantly lash out at anyone who threatens their notion of being “somebody.” Maybe they get angry over something as simple as a social media post that they disagree with politically or religiously or something like that, so they lash out violently with foul language and cruel private messaging, but it’s their own insecurities and learned behaviors that come into play, not really anything you’ve done.
If someone reacts violently or hatefully to you, they are reacting out of fear. Maybe it’s a generational fear that is buried so deep in them that they don’t even know it’s there. Maybe it’s a learned behavior, instilled and ingrained, but it’s still a fear.
If an action is intended to help another, either spiritually, physically, financially, emotionally, mentally, or socially; then it is motivated by love. Love compels us to acts of faith, *true confidence, *true humility, kindness, gentleness, *forgiveness, *objectivity, patience, and selflessness. Love brings joy and laughter and fond memories. It doesn’t lash out in anger and understands that others get tired and stressed. It doesn’t hold others to impossible standards or double standards. It doesn’t act in covert contract mode, expecting something in return. Love gives for the sake of giving, not receiving and shows gratitude when it does receive. Love brings growth, joy and life to everything it touches.
Every kind, compassionate and uplifting thing is done out of love. Every unkind thing is basically, an extension of fear or just plain old habit. In some cases, it’s both. If I am secure in love, then it doesn’t matter what someone says, it shouldn’t rattle me, or at least not for very long.
Love is like sunlight and water. Where there is love there is life.
A lot of people live in fear and the ironic thing about fear is that it causes people to run away from the positive, from hope and encouragement. It causes them not to recognize what is good when they see it and to label the strongest attributes of humanity: gentleness, kindness, patience, meekness, forgiveness, mercy, etc., as weak and mistakes brutality and violence for strength.
The truth is that it takes great courage to be gentle in a world where harshness is the standard. It takes great faith to be positive in a world where we are bombarded by negativity. Love brings us that courage and faith.
I’m reminded of Gladys Aylward, a tiny English woman, who led a hundred orphaned Chinese children to safety over the mountains during a time when all of China was in the grip of fear and war and she did it with love.
Love is the greatest force on earth. It is greater than war, greater than violence. It is greater than fear and it is greater than disease. Love endures forever and nothing can ever change that. Love is God and God is Love. If you want to know the Creator of the Universe, the One Who Never Dies, Great Spirit, Ancient of Days, the Force and Source of All, then look no further than Love.
*my definition of true confidence as opposed to cocky self-assurance is doing what you need to do with the faith that all will work out as it should and without the need to control people or outcomes.
*objectivity–in my mind–is the ability to remove your “personal” preferences, likes and dislikes, from a situation and see it from many angles and from the perspective of others involved and make the decision based on what pathway yields the most positive or favorable outcomes for everyone involved, taking into considerations the effects on and motivations of others.
*true humility–I believe that there is such a thing as false humility where a person acts humble in order to appear to be a “good person” or “more spiritual” but in truth the act is motivated by self-interest. True humility doesn’t care who’s watching or who’s not and will often try to perform in secret without getting recognized or needing recognition. True humility doesn’t need a pat on the back or a trophy. In the same way, true humility will propel you to the stage even when self pride wants you to sit back and not make a fool of yourself. It does what needs to be done for the good of everyone involved, regardless of who does or does not get the credit.
*forgiveness–does not mean forgetfulness. If a person has it in their nature to lie, cheat, steal or whatever, you don’t have to be blind to that fact, just accept that they are that way, keep your distance from them. Simply let go of any anger they caused you and don’t carry it or hold it against them. Caring a grudge will not punish them. However, it may add extra stress to your life and make you physically ill.
I miss the red house
porch all around
slave quarters in back
ivy on iron gates
arches for ladies
to gossip beneath.
That house promised
yesterday had value
ancestors wisdom.
Now I know.
Old things
lovely things
pieces of identity
testimonies of heritage
have not so much worth
as parking lots.
I diverge from my writings on depth psychology today and revisit a concept I found in my notes from some years ago. It comes on the heels of a post I made on my artist blog concerning one of my paintings. I look in the mirror and I see gray hair beginning to peep out of my dark strands and yet, I’m okay with it. I may dye it, eventually, if I don’t like the way it looks later on. But if I do, it’ll be my choice and not something that I feel pressured to do. However, like with many things, the voices in our world scream that we need to “fix” that gray hair, and instill fear that if our hair is gray, we are less attractive and if we are less attractive, then we are less valuable.
We are daily bombarded with messages that we need to be slimmer, taller, prettier, smarter, richer, younger-looking; that we need newer gadgets, smart cars, smart phones, smart homes, and I-everthings. The internet tells us what to wear, what to eat, and where to go. We get the message that we need to have these things or do these things in order to have a better life, to be happier. I actually know women who will not walk out their front door without make-up, because they’re afraid someone might see them and reject them. I want to tell them that make-up can’t make them beautiful or more acceptable. Beauty first has to come from inside.
It kind of reminds me of the story of Adam and Eve when the serpent told Eve she needed to bite the fruit because then she would be better. She would have something she didn’t already have, know something she didn’t already know. She would ‘move up in the world.’ Yet, Eve was already at the top and she already had all the knowledge she needed inside herself. All she had to do was trust the voice she already knew was true. But I don’t fault Eve. The liar was probably persistent, showing up day after day, looking good, charming, appealing, promising high rewards. The same thing happens to us all on a daily basis. The same lie, the lie that we “need” to obtain something to be worthy or better or just good enough, is being pitched to us all every single day and like Eve, we bite into it, and then offer the same critical lie to someone else. I believe happiness is found when we know our own worth and live according to our own values. In other words, we have to assert that we are ENOUGH and don’t need to bite into anything else.
Somewhere in our pasts someone criticized us out of their own insecurities or thoughtlessness or ignorance; but the criticisms stick, the lie continues, the lie that says, “You’re not _______ enough.” The lie says that you need to do something, obtain something, to be better, to have more knowledge.
At the very least it is a lie that causes a woman to look in the mirror and turn away with a knot in her stomach, feeling that she isn’t–enough. I hear women make negative statements about themselves all of the time. They look at some woman in a magazine and compare themselves. The kind of beauty we see on television and in magazines is what some money hungry cooperation has designed to get more in their bank accounts. That’s why fashion is always changing. They want things to consistently be hard to obtain so that people will pay more to get it…and that includes everything from beautiful hair to buns of steel…anything to make money.
Now, I’m not advocating letting yourself go. I believe in being responsible for the house I live in and not just letting it fall apart. Yes, we should try to eat right and get adequate sleep. We should exercise, but the belief that our value is tied up in our physical appearance or the things that we own, etc., is a lie. If that were so, beautiful young celebrities who “have it all” would not be overdosing or committing suicide.
Real beauty is found with the inward adorning of the heart. It’s okay to look our best, to want to be pretty, but the mistake comes when we began to believe that our value is tied to our appearance or that anyone in this this world actually knows what true beauty looks like. Who gives “them” the right to define what is beautiful? Is not beauty in the eye of the beholder as the old saying goes? When we allow anyone to determine our value based on…anything…or when we believe that our value is determined by what we look like, what we have or what we can do…we believe the lie that we are not____enough. It all comes down to who and what are we believe and our beliefs determine the quality of our lives, not our looks, not our bank accounts, not our popularity, but our beliefs. So, that is where beauty lies.
Lisa was 97 years old when I worked at the center for the elderly. She always sat in the chair by the door with a romance novel in her lap. I commented on her love of romance one day and she said, “I’m old, but I’m still human.”
I squatted beside her chair; her eyes sparkled. “When you grow old,” she said, “you don’t stop being human. You don’t stop having feelings or having dreams.” She shrugged, “I’m nearly a hundred, but as long as I am in this world, I have hopes.”
She then spoke of what it was like to have people look at her as if she weren’t in her right mind, because she was elderly and what it was like to have others think she needed someone to make decisions for her. She told me of how it wounded her pride to be treated like she was senile when she wasn’t, of how people just assumed that because she was old, she had somehow stopped having any pride or emotions or feelings of self-worth or that she deserved pretty things. Then spoke of how she had served as a nurse in WWII and how she had paid her dues for her country. She was a veteran. She told me of how she had come from the Choctaw Nation and she was an American of all Americans.
She asked me for hot cocoa and told me the special way she liked it. I went in the kitchen to make it and the young worker in there said, “You making chocolate for Lisa? She won’t like it. She’ll send you back. That old bitty can’t be satisfied.”
But I made it exactly as Lisa had told me to make it and if she had asked me to redo it, I would have done so. I sat beside her and listened to more stories until I had to go attend to another matter. Daily, I listened to Lisa’s stories and I read manuscripts from 80 year olds with dreams of becoming writers and I discovered something that I hope every 30 year-old will soon discover, age is nothing. Our spirits, the real us, are ageless, eternal.
Lisa at 97 was the same Lisa who had done all of those amazing things in her 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. Lisa, at 97, was more mentally clear and intelligent than that 30 year-old who called her an old bitty. It is a foolish person who writes someone off because of age or appearance. She wasn’t any more demanding than I would have been in her shoes. Who wants to eat tasteless food and drink watered down hot cocoa? She wasn’t hard to please, she just wanted to be treated with dignity and respect. I don’t know what ever happened to Lisa. I’m sure she’s gone by now or else she is 115 years old, which isn’t impossible, but I doubt she’s still with us. Still, at 97, she taught me a thing or two about life and I am forever grateful for the two summers I spent working at the center and the insights I gained into human nature.
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Sometimes
flute sounds
lift me out
of mud
days on end
with rain
too many hours
under gray skies.
* Robert Mullinax Flute Player. May his music lift your spirits as it does mine.
When I was a kid, my mom and I spent hours putting together jigsaw puzzles. I got pretty good at it. This week I put a puzzle together and as I did, I had a Forrest Gump’s Momma kind of moment, but instead of thinking that life is like a box of chocolates, I thought, “Life is like a jigsaw puzzle.”
WE PUT IT TOGETHER WITHOUT A BOX LID TO GUIDE US
Except we don’t get to look at the picture on the the box, because we left it somewhere. And we can’t remember where. We are aware that it had an image on it, but we can’t remember exactly what it looked like. The nuances escape us. We may have some idea that it was a garden or a yellow cat or whatever, but we don’t have the exact image to go by, just some vague memory.
So, we look at the pieces in front of us and try to fit them together. Sometimes, the colors, shapes and patterns match up perfectly and sometimes, they don’t. Often, we’re like nine-year-old children, trying to cram pieces together that don’t really go together and then we get mad because our picture isn’t unfolding in a way that makes sense to us.
It’s not impossible to put the puzzle together without the complete picture to guide us. I have done that a time or two. It just takes quite a bit of slowing down the mind and allowing intuition to come into play, paying attention to those subtle variations in colors, sizes, patterns, and shapes of the pieces. I mean you must analyze every piece in relation to the last piece you put down and the surrounding pieces. When we do this, without trying to force the pieces together to create the immediate results that we want, we soon see a true picture unfolding and each time we fit one piece with another that naturally goes with it, we feel a small sense of exhilaration and triumph.
WE HAVE AMNESIA AND LEFT IT SOMEWHERE.
We sort of come into this world with spiritual amnesia and the older we get, the longer we go without a view of the “box lid,” the less we remember. We start listening to other people tell us how we’re supposed to be and what the pictures of our lives are supposed to look like. We start trying to fit the pieces into place according to what others say, but here’s the thing. They lost their box lids, too, and most don’t even know what their own puzzles are supposed to look like, let alone yours! So, they try to tell you how to put your puzzle together based on what they think theirs are maybe, possibly, supposed to be. It doesn’t work. It leads to frustration and to anger. Some people get so mad that you’re not putting your puzzle together like they think it ought to be that they try to force you, even hurt you. Some go so far in their need to control as to destroy another person’s puzzle. They may try to control you, trick you, manipulate you, intimidate you, threaten you—all because it unnerves them that they might not actually be the master puzzle solvers they have believed themselves to be. They might get so fearful that somehow it is going to hurt them if they allow you to put your own puzzle together. They might also get afraid someone else is going to damage their puzzles or steal their pieces, so they set up a guard and vehemently guard their puzzles, not allowing anyone in who doesn’t follow their prescribed rules for solving puzzles. Others scream at you and tell you how bad you are because your picture isn’t looking the way they think it’s supposed to look.
Sometimes, we feel horrible about ourselves, and we think that somehow, we’re just not good at putting our puzzles together and that there is something wrong with our brains or our hearts or that we are just not “good people.” We walk around feeling guilty and unworthy because we aren’t putting our puzzles together to please others, or we compared our puzzles to theirs and ours looks smaller or duller or more jumbled. We go to the puzzle “experts”, and they tell us how to put our puzzles together. But guess what? They don’t have the box lid to our puzzles either!
So, what do we do?
WE CALL THE PUZZLE-MAKER
Imagine that you know that the original creator of your puzzle and that this creator knows exactly where each piece goes. This puzzle-maker comes and whispers in your ear as you put your puzzle together and tells you which piece to pick up and how to turn it and points to the exact place where it goes. There is no stress on you. Your struggle ceases. The only way you can go back to feeling stressed, guilty, fearful, chaotic, etc. is to resist the help being offered to you, if you ignore the puzzle-maker’s instructions.
I will interject here that sometimes well-meaning people will come along and point out to you that you are in error, because the instructions you’re receiving from the puzzle-maker aren’t the same as what they think is right, so they want to remind you that there’s something wrong with your hearing and they offer their services to translate for you and tell you that you should follow their instructions as they are clearly more qualified to talk to Puzzle-Maker than you, but they’re not, because Puzzle-Maker talks to them about their puzzles and to you about yours.
So, if we trust the puzzle-maker and stop listening to everyone else, we find that we are not only putting our puzzle together almost effortlessly, without relentlessly struggling to jam together pieces that don’t belong together, we’re also having a wonderful time trusting and getting to know the puzzle-maker.
Each person’s life is a unique puzzle that is only finished when we leave our earth bodies. It doesn’t matter if anyone else in the world can see that our picture is unfolding as it should or if they can see the complete picture when we’re done. It’s not their job to see it. It’s not even ours. It’s simply our job to put our puzzle together and we can either do it without guidance, guessing our way through or we can listen to the soft guiding voice of the puzzle-maker.
TRUST THAT THE PIECES WILL COME TOGETHER
I believe that everything in my life is working out for my good, for my highest benefit, so long as I don’t get impatient and try to force the pieces together before the Puzzle-Master tells me where to put them. People can say whatever they want, do whatever they want but as for me, I will follow my internal spiritual guidance system. I paraphrase what King David of Israel once said of his puzzle-maker, “What you say, your word, is a lamp that lights my path.” There are times when I don’t know exactly what I should wish for or ask for or which way to go, but if I wait, the answer comes. The indwelling I Am in me helps me with this weakness, asking for things so wonderful and deep that my natural mind hasn’t caught up just yet and it’s not even possible for me to speak or write those deepest desires with ordinary speech. Still, they are there and if I only follow the gentle guiding of my puzzle-maker, the whole picture unfolds, a piece at a time.
So, each of us has our own life path to walk, our own puzzle to complete. The puzzle-maker is constantly whispering to us “This piece goes here,” or “no, not there. Not yet.” It’s up to us to choose whether to listen and trust enough to follow the puzzle-maker’s guidance or not. There is never any force involved. If there is force, it’s not the puzzle-maker doing the forcing, it’s another person without a box lid, another person who can’t see the big, eternal picture. If we listen to those Spirit whispers and obey them, our life-puzzles go together so much easier.
As for me, I will live my life trusting the puzzle-maker to guide me in putting every piece into its proper place. If that brings people into my life, great. If that causes some people to walk out, it doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate them, or love them, it just means that my highest call is not to complete their puzzles, it’s to complete mine.
I COULD GIVE YOU a long list of my publications and bore you with a recount of my humble, meager awards and accolades, but you can go to my author page on amazon or on any one of the publishing house sites where my books are listed and learn those things. I think I would rather talk to you about the really important things, the things that qualify me to write about the things I write about. I’d rather talk to you about what my parents taught me about living.
I was born in the Appalachian foothills, one among seven children. We were so poor that we had no indoor plumbing, no phone and no central air or heat. I remember when eating wild game was our main source of meat. Then we got a cow, but she ran over a bluff and killed herself. After that, we took to raising hogs and leasing tobacco crops. My daddy also worked at a sawmill where he sawed hickory baseball bats. He did everything he could to feed us and Momma raised a big garden every year. We raised anything that would grow, even our own peanuts. I say we were poor but I never felt poor, not until someone told me that I was poor. I was like Dolly Parton in her song, “Coat of Many Colors’. “I felt rich as I could be.”
There were times when all my family had was each other and somehow, that was always enough. My parents taught us that love is the only thing of true value in this entire world and whatever is not of love, well, it’s not eternal. I have lived my mortal life in the light of immortality. We never believed in final good-byes, only “see you laters.” I recall a memory of one summer night when my parents were lying on a quilt on the hillside behind our house. We had no TV at the time and so we would play outside until dark and sometimes our parents would come outside and watch us from the hillside. This particular night I was talking about all the stuff that some of the kids at school had.
I can still hear my daddy’s voice saying, “If you ain’t got love, you ain’t got nothin’ in this life.”
Then Momma chimed in and said, “Money can buy you a lot of things, but money can’t buy real love. If you have love and family you have everything.”
Daddy said, “Remember that, Sis.”
My daddy was a storyteller and every night he’d gather us around the old aluminum kitchen table and spin his tales for us. He couldn’t read but he could remember and he had an imagination. He told stories that had been handed down from his grandfather and his childhood and he told stories that he made up. Each night I would be the last kid listening, begging for just one more story. My parents would have to make me go to bed. We had very few books, but we did have stories and then there was Momma’s sacred book, a high school literature book of poems by Edgar Allen Poe and short stories by O’Henry. I read those poems and I knew…knew with everything in me… that I was a poet, too. I started writing poetry on every thing that had a surface to write on, even my grandmother’s giant squash. I checked books out from the school library and read like there was no tomorrow. I fell in love with far away places and adventures. I loved stories written ones, spoken ones, sung ones…I just loved stories.
In the fifth grade the Gideons came to school and passed out little red New Testaments. It was the most special thing to me, my very own book full of stories. And in the back? Blank pages. I was certain that God himself had left those pages blank so that I could add my story to them. I took an ink pen and wrote an imagined story about my Great-great-grandpa crossing the Rio Grande and coming to the U.S. It was, of course, completely fabricated from Daddy’s tales and my imagination, but it didn’t matter. It was MY story. I think I was 9 years old at the time. But with the gift of a New Testament, a writer’s dream was born.
Momma believed in my dream. That Christmas we were so broke that it looked like we would get no presents at all. A charity group came to our house and brought gifts and fruit. I’ll always be grateful for that group, but Momma and Daddy wanted so much to get us something that they went to a loan company and borrowed a little money and that year when my siblings got toys, I got a college dictionary for Christmas. It was the greatest gift anyone has ever given me, because I knew that it had come with sacrifice and with hope. Momma said, “One day you’re going to go to college and make something out of yourself and you’re going to need to know all of these big words. I felt bad not getting you a toy, but I felt like that you would like this better.” I hugged that dictionary and thanked her for it.
A Bible and a dictionary in the same year. My future had been set in motion. Little did I realize that one day I truly would write my story and Daddy’s story and Momma’s story and maybe the story of a million other 9 year-old dreamers.
In the years to follow I held onto the dictionary. I still have it today. The cover wore off and I recovered it in discarded wallpaper. Eventually, even that wore off. If you were to visit my home and see that old book with no cover, you’d think maybe it was a piece of junk but it’s not. It’s a symbol of my mother’s hopes for me.
My mom left this world at 38, one month before I graduated high school. She never got to see me go to college and use the dictionary that she gave me to help me through my classes. She never got to see me win the Art scholarship that made it possible for me to go, never got to hear me play guitar or got to see her grandchildren. But she did see. She saw it when I was 9 and she used her today to plan for my tomorrow. Thank you, Momma. Your dreams carried me through until I could see my own dreams and your dauntless, unselfish love, made me want to impact the life of everyone I meet.
