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.

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.

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.

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.”

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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.