September,
my dear friend,
keeper of balance,
you always move faster
than other moons
or so it seems to me.
Maybe it is because
I am attached to you
and wish you to visit longer
each year. You share your beauty
goldenrods, iron weeds, black-eyed susans,
you who are of the nut gathering moon
I feel your anxiousness in the wind
and I know you are not one to sit
for long, so you must run,
swift like the deer.
My kitchen table doesn’t set level. It never has. Daddy made it with a chain saw and he couldn’t quite get the legs right. The nail heads are visible, not tiny furniture nails, but carpenter nails, the kind you would use to build a porch. Daddy couldn’t afford new nails, but he had some left over from an outbuilding he had built years ago. And he had a chain saw, an old one with a chain that often jumped, but he was thankful to have it. He had heard me say that I wished I had an old-fashioned table, so he made me one.
He presented it to me with a great sense of accomplishment one hot, dry day in the fall a few years ago. “It’s genuine cedar,” he said. I ran my hands over the pink and tan wood, feeling the marks left by his chain saw. “It’s a little wobbly,” he said. “I couldn’t get them legs right.”
“I love it,” I said. It was small and rugged, but it was also warm and rich and unique. I knew there would never be another table like it on this planet. It was individual as the man who had made it.
I discarded my store bought table, gave it away, and moved the one my daddy made into my kitchen. Through the years I’ve visited many nice homes, seen many exquisite tables, some marble top, others with satin finishes, some soft maple, others heavy oak. I have even thought about what it would be like to have such finery in my home, but those whimsical desires do not last. I have thought about moving my table to the basement or to a porch or some other less conspicuous corner of my home, but my heart immediately convicts me of my vanity. Daddy made that table with all the love a human can hold in his heart. No factory-made piece of furniture could ever stand in the most beloved room of my home, the center piece of so many family memories.
The table , with a chunk of wood under one leg and folded newspaper under another, has held Christmas pies and Thanksgiving turkeys. It has been the gathering place of Saturday morning french-banana pancake frenzies, held in my daughter’s honor, and the pedestal for Friday night pizzas. It’s where my husband and I share our coffee every day after work, where we speak of our trials and triumphs.
It has often served as our family alter and counseling center. It’s where my daughter’s wedding cake was decorated and where her dress was sewn. It’s where we annihilated each other in Trivia Pursuit and where many of my books, poems and songs have been written. Pictures have been painted on that table and stories have been told around it. It’s the source so of a hundred journal entries and the place where I meet my Creator every morning before my hectic day begins for quite time and coffee.
Sometimes I just run my hands over that table and think of the love that Daddy must have had to make it especially for me. The corners aren’t even. The cracks between the planks may be a little wide. There are knot holes and just plain holes, but that table testifies to me each day, reminding me that there has never been a time in my life when I haven’t known what it is liked to be loved, and it challenges me every day to go and live out my father’s legacy, to love someone the way I want to be loved.
It’s one a.m. and I’m still up. I should have gone to bed a few hours ago, but my best brain activity seems to kick in long after sunset, long after phones have stopped ringing and no one is apt to come to the door. In the wee hours of darkness there is a tremendous long stretch of solitude that lends itself to writing. I can’t say what I look like the next day or what time I’ll want to roll out of bed, and I know that in about three weeks, I’ll have to stop all of this staying up until the roosters crow. I’ll be back at my day job, but in the meantime, I write at night, just because….
When Senor Cortez cried
beneath the tree, wept
for greedy soldiers
whose stolen gold sank
into brackish waters;
what destiny brought
him back upon us
to kill with disease,
with hunger and canons
except the fate that brought
Mexico to these far hills
where she learned to sing
Irish ballads.
I did something the other day that shocks me as I look back on it. I tried to convince a co-worker through my speech, dress and actions, that I was just ordinary and average. I went out of my way with my words to assure her that there was nothing “weird” about me, that I was as “down to earth” and “average” as anyone could ever be. Well, in one sense of the word I suppose that was true. I mean I do wear clothes, eat food, sleep and do other normal things, but in another sense of the word, I lied, to her and to myself. I’m not average and I’ve never been ordinary. I have always marched slightly off-beat and been rather individualistic, but not necessarily on purpose. I just grew up a little sheltered, a child of nature, communing more easily with bugs and trees and rocks than with people. So, there are a good many social cues and rules that I have been oblivious to for most of my life. And even now, as I learn them, they feel fake and somehow wrong to me, like wearing plastic underwear might feel. That evening when I got home, I pondered our conversation and felt a sudden wave of nausea. I went out of my way to convince her that I was not “weird”. Why? I don’t know. But I was disappointed in myself because of it.
However, as I pondered it, I realized that unless some of us run the risk of being weird, of doing things differently, no new discoveries will take flight, inventions will be stifled, societal wrongs will remain unquestioned and all that is beautiful and unique will be lost in the status quo, in the rising tide of mediocrity. I don’t want to be mediocre. I want to be excellent, not rich, not famous. Just excellent. I want to look in the mirror each morning with a clear conscience that I lived not for fame, acceptance or materialistic gain, but I lived by what I perceived to be right according to the laws of the spirit world, that I was guided my entire life by a code of honor. It doesn’t matter if the rest of the world recognizes my code of ethics, accepts them or honors them. It only matters that I am true to them, because otherwise my life would be fake and I would have impacted no one to make a choice. What kind of a choice? A choice to either aspire to greatness or settle for mediocrity. I don’t want to be mediocre, not in my life, not in my choices, not in my heart. I don’t want to believe every thing the voices of this world tell me are true. Voices lie. Humans lie. Religions lie. I want an immovable standard that cannot lie. I want an eternal code of spiritual conduct that does not cease to exist.
So, I will not always be politically correct. I may not be philosophically correct, theologically accurate or idealistically compatible with every person who comes across my blog. I may loose readership, I may gain readership. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I will have been true to my heart and spoken of what I know. If in the future I discover I am wrong, then I will change, but so long as no proof can sway me, then I shall remain steadfast. I remember the old Latin saying, “Tibi ipsi esto fidelis”, loosely translated, “To thine ownself be true.”
Sometimes, after a day of correcting, of disciplining and instructing, of guiding and showing, this hawk’s wings are laden with mud from too
many days of rain, from too much time on the ground.
I become still. I listen
to Sarah’s songs, to Susan’s melodies, to violins and mountain ballads, to Native flutes, wind in the grass, birds in the trees, to water and penny whistles.
The sludge looses its power, slips from my wings and I feel the breeze, the lift. Always, it is the music
that gives me wings.
Last year I was invited by a friend to ride out to Penn’s Store in Gravel Switch, Kentucky, to meet with Jeanne Penn Lane, owner and operator of what is possibly the oldest, still operational country store in the U.S. 
That’s just Jeanne’s way. She makes everybody feel special. She has stood on the stage with greats in country music and bluegrass. She has hugged renowned artists, poets and novelists. Still, Jeanne has a humility and grace that baffles the mind and makes you love her right off the bat. And, I suppose it’s the thing that causes me to feel indebted to Jeanne, she believes in Kentucky’s artists, writers and musicians. She believes in us so much that each year she hosts a marvelous event called Kentucky Writer’s Day where we all take turns sharing the poems we’ve written, singing the songs we’ve composed or reading from that novel we’re working on. I have met some of the most wonderful people at Kentucky Writer’s Day, people who remain my friends via facebook and email, all through the year and not just in April when the annual event is held, kind people, good people, like Sarah Elizabeth Burkey, whose music is more haunting that mist filled knobs surrounding Penn Store. I could mention so many fabulous songwriters who attend, like Dawn Osborne. Her voice is powerful and amazing.
And then there are notables and greats such as Ed McClanahan and Dr. H.R. Stoneback who always hails from New York with the Elizabeth Maddox Roberts Society of Poets.
Last year, May 2010, Penn Store suffered severe damage from a flood. We all despaired that the end of Penn Store and Kentucky Writer’s Day might be at hand, but Dr. Stoneback and his society of poets joined forces with writers from around the country and around the world. They compiled a book of poetry about Penn’s Store. All proceeds from this book go to the restoration of Penn’s Store.
If you ever happen to be passing through Danville, Kentucky or Lebanon or Liberty, stop and ask someone how to get to Old Penn Store in Gravel Switch. And while you’re there, drop a few coins in the jar to support Jeanne’s ongoing efforts to give creative Kentuckians a platform to share their works and their hearts. And if you happen to be passing through in April, maybe you’ll just join us, sit on the porch and pick a tune with us, or maybe read that poem you’ve been hiding for the past ten years.
I heard this song performed this weekend and I was so touched by it. I know it’s been around awhile, but it’s message is still as clear today as ever. This earth is our RESPONSIBILITY and has been since the first time Adam stuck his big toe in the mud:)
To Listen, click the title 🙂
PARADISE by John Prine
C F C
When I was a child my family would travel
C G C
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
C F C
And there’s a backwards old town that’s often remembered
C G C
So many times that my memories are worn.
C F C
And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County
C G C
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
C F C
Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking
C G C
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away
Well sometimes we’d travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we’d shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill.
And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away
Then the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.
And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away
When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam
I’ll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waiting
Just five miles away from wherever I am.
And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away
Just one more, in honor of my dad. He could play this like nobody else. It was his favorite “non-gospel” song, reserved for family get-togethers and other kinds of shindigs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENS4nD0vRKI&feature=related
For Daddy:
For over a year my daddy has battled lung cancer and liver cancer. He has been brave and forgiving and kind throughout the whole ordeal. Thursday morning he departed from this world. I had the blessing of being with him during his final moments, as did my brothers and sisters. I have so many thing I want to say about him, that I want the world to know. So, I post this in honor of my dad and I hope that everyone who reads will identify and remember someone who loved you and made a difference in your life.
Quotes from my dad.
“It don’t matter if you got money or things. What matters is that you got family and that you stick together. That you love each other. Without love, the rest is a big fat zero.”
— William Henry Franklin
“I’m gonna tell you something. People say a lot of things. It don’t matter what people say. It just matters what God says.”
—William Henry Franklin
A Verse He Loved:
1 John 5:13 (King James Version)
13These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.
My dad and I read and discussed this Bible verses many times over the past year. It was probably his favorite verse, proving that his favorite story, that of the Prodigal Son, was a reality. John also says in another place, “He that hath the Son hath life…” my daddy knew this and it was his desire that everyone else know it, too.
My dad took me on my first fishing trip. He took me to the doctor when I had the measles and Momma had to stay home with the other kids, because there were so many of us. He sat with me for over an hour in the doctor’s office and held my hair when I vomited on the waiting room floor. I was five.
My dad took me to school on my first day of first grade. He walked me to the gym and told me everything would be okay. He held my hand, and I didn’t want to let go of him. I didn’t want to enter that strange new world.
My dad came and rescued me from a 4-H meeting when I was ten. He found me sitting in the corner, a poor little outcast, while the other kids who were members of a “click” totally ignored me. He said, “Sis, you’re not coming back. They’re not treating you right. You’re too good for that.” He believed in me, more than my peers, more than my teachers. And I wanted to throw my arms around him and tell him that he was my hero, but he was driving us home, so I couldn’t.
My dad taught me that the only safe place in the face of a tornado was in the arms of Jesus. I remember watching him pray when the weather forecast said a storm was coming and our basement was full of water. He prayed and I knew God heard him.
My dad taught me that family sticks up for each other when he confronted the school bus driver who refused to come all the way up to the house and get us in the midst of winter due to ‘legalities’. When my dad was done with the bus driver, those legalities were negotiable.
My dad taught me that you can’t get to heaven holding a grudge when he forgave someone who had clearly wronged and hurt him.
You may have known my dad for his humor, of which he had plenty, but I knew him as an embodiment of honor and integrity. If he made you a promise, there was no contract needed. He would perform what he had said. He believed in family and said some bonds are forever. He knew he loved my momma from the moment he saw her. He was willing to go to the ends of life itself to prove it. His greatest wish was that all of his children and grandchildren, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins, aunts and uncles would come to know Jesus and his last words before he left this temporal realm were, “Love God”.
My father taught me that life isn’t about what you get, but rather what you give. Success isn’t a number in your bank account, but rather it’s the number of lives you’ve blessed, souls you’ve touched. He told me countless times that hearses are not accompanied by u-halls and that the only thing a man takes out of this world is what he brings into it. He brought love and light into it. He brought forgiveness and compassion. He found a reason to see the good in people no one else could see the good in. He believed that Jesus meant it when he said that God is love and we should love one another.
When I told him that I wanted to give away all the money from the sales of my book to fighting cancer and that I wanted to do it in his name, he said that he was honored. There are a lot of people who live their lives worried over the amount of land, houses and money they can acquire, but I say that a life not measured int he things given away, is a life of loneliness and bitterness. My dad was the most successful man I know and he left this world richer than all the kings of this world throughtout all of the ages combined.
He said to me when I was just a little girl, “Sis, money and things don’t mean nothing if you ain’t got love. Love and family. That’s what counts.”
Skip the ad Carpe Diem
Note to self: THIS DAY, FOLLOW YOUR HEART AND BE TRUE TO YOUR CALL.
Carolyn Arends is a very talented and soulful artist. This video is of one of my favorite songs.
Since childhood, I have had the overwhelming sensation that the physical world is not the real world, but more like a stop at a tourist center along the journey to someplace far more wonderful. I used to sit in my swing as a little girl and look up into the clouds. I had never been to church at the time, nor had I received any spiritual teaching, per se. Yet, I knew, was convinced at my very core, that there was more to life than I could see or hear. It was like I had amnesia and had forgotten something important that I once knew. I tried to draw this other place, but I could never quite get it right. Once as a child I did a painting a cemetery with spiritual [they looked kind of like angels] beings above a cloud barrier. I was trying to show that other place which haunted me in my dreams, that stayed in my mind. My mother told me that my painting was morbid, yet that picture comforted me.
As an adult I came to the conclusion that I had been right all along. I became convinced that we are truly spiritual beings, but are momentarily in a physical vehicle, that allows us to travel about while we are on visitation to this physical realm. I think of an old gospel song I heard as a teenager, “This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.” So, true. That is exactly how I feel, how I have felt my entire life. I am a foreigner in this temporal reality. I’m from some place else. One of these days I will go home again, but in the meantime, I’m on a mission here. I have to leave my drop in the ocean, follow my bliss, be true to my calling. Define it with whatever terms you like, but I know that my life has a purpose and I must be true to that purpose and part of that purpose is to encourage others to be still, hear their hearts, seek God and live according to their purpose.
Everything in nature has a purpose and teaches us that all things have a purpose, so why not us? So, today I encourage you, if there is music in your heart, set it free. If there is a dance in your soul, give it legs. If there are words in you spirit, write them down. If you long to heal, set out on a course to become a doctor or a nurse. If you have the gift to lead and inspire, consider teaching. There is a purpose for your natural bent. Your desire may be the confirmation of the destination. Do not compare yourself to those the world declares successful. I do not have a best seller, but I am a successful writer, because I write what is in my heart and I give the money from my work to the causes I believe in. Success does not always equal fame and fortune. In the world where I’m from success means you have followed your heart and heard from spirit.
Silas House is an amazing Kentucky writer whom I have had the honor of meeting at a writer’s workshop a couple of years ago. Although, I seriously doubt he would remember me. I often like to visit his blog and just read. So, I’m posting a quote from him. I’ve often felt that it was the job of the artist in this world to show people a glimpse of another world, the spiritual world. But that’s enough from me. Please enjoy the quotes from Silas below and then go visit his blog. It’s a great place to stop and ponder.
Art, by illuminating the truth, sheds light on how we can be better people. Nearly everything I ever learned about being a better person, and more specifically a better Christian, I learned from books and poems. I am thinking of novels like The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, which taught me that the true path to God is to recognize Him and honor Him every single day. In that book the character Shug Avery says, “Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets trying to be loved. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see He’s always trying to please us back.” When you walk through the world every single day noticing everything, you are honoring God. And that is what any artist must do to be a truly good artist. There is no way that an artist can walk through the day without seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting, and experiencing everything they can. It is not a great leap to make this a part of one’s religiosity or spirituality.
….I believe God lives in everything. Not just churches and cathedrals. Not just in trees and leaves of grass and flowers. But even in—especially in—the leads of pencils, the lenses of cameras, the tips of paintbrushes, the pirouette of a ballerina, the rich alto of a singer, the curve of a sculptor’s cut, in books and poems and music. He made all of these things and made them a gift to us, so let us all go out into the world with the hope of giving back this gift.
http://silashouseblog.blogspot.com/
“If you are humble, nothing will touch you,
neither praise nor disgrace, because
you know who you are. If you are blamed,
you won’t be discouraged;
if anyone calls you a saint,
you won’t put yourself on a pedestal.”
–Mother Theresa, Total Surrender 1993
I keep remembering a song from somewhere in my past, I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool. And I think of how being country isn’t a style of music, or an area of the nation, it’s a way of life.
Here, in my “country”, I see somebody “I know” every time I go anywhere. A five minute trip to the Dollar Store may take half an hour if I run into an old high school buddy, someone who used to be my neighbor or my second grade teacher. Folks around here may carry on a fifteen minute conversation at the gas pump, a social nuance that drives outsiders crazy. We go to Walmart more to socialize than to shop and country stores still exists, complete with checkered table clothes, home cooked meals and “can stuff” on the shelves. We feared their days were numbered when many were forced, by large company mergers and consolidations, to take out gasoline pumps, but dinner time, which happens to be noon here, is still a busy place where locals gather to spin tales and “cut up” [that means laughing and carrying on in a big way]. So, I am happy to say that even coorporations were unable to take away our hospitality.
Oh, it’s not quite like it was when I was a kid. Seems like the country’s a little more crowded than it used to be, but it’s still slow and quiet in a lot of ways when you compare it to some other areas of the nation. I suppose that having the nearest Starbuck’s an hour away would be a major inconvenience to some, but to me, it’s just a great excuse to brew my own coffee, sit on the back porch and have a second cup while I think about what I want to write next.
At the risk of sounding like a stereo-typical country bumpkin, I’m going to tell you that I am thankful for my quiet country life, for narrow lines and winding hills, for the old men who used to widdle on the courthouse lawn, for beautician who knows my name and can see me without an appointment, for the doctor who has been a family friend for over thirty years, for the mailman who hauls my boxes of books on the bed of his pick-up truck, for the neighbor who eats pinto beans over at the store and the gal who cooks the beans and for the checkered curtains on the windows and the trumpet vine that chokes the light pole beside the road. I’m thankful for every thing that makes living in the country what it is and I want to caution folks who don’t want a simple life to please stay where you are. If you want to be in a hurry and busy and always in the “know and the now”, don’t come our way.
I have seen a man ill
with unforgiveness which ate
at him like a cancer,
spreading through his soul
then his spirit, until
even his laughter hurt
and hurt others to hear,
and no true joy grew
inside him, no contentment,
only reaffirmed sorrow while
the man he held his grudge for
walked about life freely
unhurt.
I Listened, Momma received first place in the Young Adult division of the Preditors & Editor’s Readers’ Poll for 2010.
From the bottom of my heart I appreciate every person who has bought this book and read this story. I am thankful for every vote and every kind word.
The book has raised quite a bit of money for Relay for Life [locally]. My dream is that it will make a mark on the national scene within the next few weeks and months.
So, again I say “Thank you”.
As a writer my ultimate dream was to write a great book and have a publishing company accept it. Now, that dream has come true, but it’s taken over a decade. However, a writer’s life doesn’t change overnight. People often think that once your book is accepted, well, you’ve made it. The truth is that once the book is accepted, the hard part has just begun. You see, unless your book miraculously gets accepted by one of the giant companies and they decide to turn you into the next writing “super star”, you’re probably going to be picked up by a smaller house. Smaller houses can’t always offer you advances or lots of perks. They’re small. Remember?
I run into a LOT of people who tell me that they’re going to write a book someday. I think that’s great, but writing the book is only a small step in the long journey. A writing lifestyle is one of dedication. You create your product, you refine it, rewrite it several times, get critiqued, get the jitters, get scammed by sharks in the water and then get turned down, bunches of times. You keep on submitting until somebody says yes and then you pack up your bags and go door to door [virtually speaking] to convince the world that your product is worth buying. You’re an artist, a business person, a salesman, a publicist and a book keeper. And in the midst of it all you must remain a motivational speaker, mainly because the negative voice in your head will keep telling you that no one will want to read your story, that you’re wasting your time.
So, why write? Well, because the ability to write is a gift and a skill. Gifts should be shared and skills should be honed. Besides, I can’t imagine NOT WRITING. It’s what I do and just a part of who I am.
Take courage, fellow writers, fellow dreamers and keep on scribbling, no matter what, even if you do have to take time off to sell your work.
I love to drive down to Rock House Bottom and on into Creelsboro. I can almost “feel” the world that existed when my great-grandma was a little girl, a world prior to the 1920’s when river boats went up and down the river.
I found this wonderfully interesting article in Kentucky Living and well, here’s a link: <a http://skrecc.com/dsk/dsk_jan97.pdfI hope you enjoy the article as much as I did. I mostly enjoy visiting.
