Sunday morning, the last Sunday before Christmas, the last Sunday of Christian Advent, i became a better person, experiencing an emotional morning due to my sister Martha and my brother Joe.

Maureen and i are on top of my favorite mountain (especially after retiring my skis several year ago).

Just before 11:00, my brother-in-law and i went to the Signal Crest Methodist Church. We parked and walked up to the balcony and sat in the back row.

For an hour, i was mesmerized. My sister Martha plays in the bell choir, which performed to excellent pieces, especially their version of “Noel.” The pastor, Dave Graybeal, gave a sermon centered around Mr. Rogers and his neighborhood. Ordinarily, i politely act like i listen to sermons while thinking about other things. Dave’s resonated with me. Even Tracy Gartman’s presentation to the children moved me.

There was a goodness in the air. It moved me.

i am a lucky man to have my sister and brother-in-law in my life.

◆◆◆

Martha’s and my brother Joe is a retired Methodist minister. He is also brilliant and holds master degrees in theology and philosophy from Boston University. He wrote a book, The Elements of Prayer, modeled from Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. It is a moving book that is for everyone to contemplate on their relationship with their higher power. i gave a copy to Marty Linville, one of my best friends in San Diego and his wife Linda. They were very religious Catholics. Marty was awarded the Army’s Silver Star due to his valiant action when in charge of a 105 howitzer artillery unit that was overrun by a North Vietnamese company. Marty told me several years later that he and Linda would read Joe’s book on prayer every month or so because of the grace they received from it. i will pick my copy up and read it again when i am feeling a bit low.

Joe is a wonderful man. He is super smart and reads deep and thoughtful books. He is a terrific family man, and loves his adopted New England. His wife Carla Neggers is a talented and successful novelist.

i am a lucky man to have such a brother and sister-in-law

Previously on Saturday evening, i opened up my brother Joe’s Facebook post:

Some fifty-odd years ago, I was walking back to my fraternity house late one evening. I had been studying for my last final exam, in Phenomenology. I had found a quiet place on the Scarritt College campus that I used when I really had to concentrate on a subject as I always did when reading Husserl. While I had been inside, it had started to snow; the ground was lightly covered and flakes were still drifting down. As I walked past Wightman Chapel, I noticed it was partially lit, the only light around, and inside someone was playing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. I was transfixed, even though the piece was not one I associated with Christmas. It was a moving moment, but then, the player stumbled on a difficult passage, stopped, and started the section over, getting it right. I stood there, listening, and then the player stumbled again, restarted, finished. I stayed until it was over and then made my way back.

I knew I would remember those moments, but it wasn’t until some years later that I began to grasp why it had been so meaningful to me. It was the stumbling blocks, the “scandalon” in New Testament Greek, that made it special, that made it become…human.

Not otherworldly, not spiritual in a shallow sense, but human, something with which another human could connect.

We are anticipating and about to celebrate The Incarnation, God made flesh, God become human, God possibly stumbling, possible of and for connection with us. Sometimes, as this year, the Christmas “Spirit” seems sparse, so I think on those moments, that connection. And that is my Christmas wish for all who read this: that you connect to others in our humanity which promises the divine to us all.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

i was deeply moved when i read that post. Grace took me by the hand once again. i felt peace washing over me. Peace for all along with a wonderful Christmas with your loved ones.

Thank you, Joe, Carla, Martha and Todd.

There are some things that never change, For me, one of those “things” is the relationship i have with George Henry Harding, IV. We have been friends since we first met at our christening in May 1945 at the Lebanon First Methodist Church in Lebanon. i was a year and four months old. Henry was a year and one month old.

We are not alike. Henry is tall, dark, handsome, and still has hair. Me…well, let’s not go there.

i probably spent as much, if not more time at Henry’s home as i did at mine after the age of seven or so, until i left for parts known and unknown when we turned 24.

Henry went to Lebanon High School. i went to Castle Heights Military Academy. We remained close and spent our weekends when not playing football, basketball, baseball together, as well as nights listening to his father’s “party” records of Moms Mabely and Redd Foxx in the front room of his home.

Henry went to the University of Tennessee. I went to Vanderbilt and graduated from Middle Tennessee.

Henry was enlisted Army and an ordance instructor in Maryland. i went to Navy OCS and eventually made the Navy my career.

Henry stilll lives in that house where we played. i have lived in a dozen places, most while being aboard 10 ships that traveled to many places, except Northern Europe and around South America.

We still talk to each other, but now, it is nearly allways by long distance phone calls. Each time, no matter how long in between, it’s like we pick up the conversation where we left off the previous time. 

Henry remains a die-hard Tennessee football fan. i continue to be a dyed–in-the-wool Vanderbilt fan. We cheer for our respective teams and enjoy the successes of the other.

Remarkably, we seem to think alike on most subjects, especially politics.

We rag at each other in the most jovial manner.

He is like another brother.

This weekend i initiated a string of emails about the Vanderbilt-Tennessee football game. i expressed my thrill at Vandy’s win but also expressed some sadness that the Vols had to lose.

This exchange went on for several emails. When i closed out, i made the comment that like Waylon Jennings sang, “I’ve always been crazy but it’s kept me from going insane.”

Henry’s reply:

“Too late.”

Not only is he like a brother, he knows me well.

i, in my old age frenzy, have replaced a great deal of writing with reading, which in my youth was my frenzy in addition to sports.

Strangely, i have selected several different types of reading: old ones off the shelf i’ve read several times from back when. New ones others have suggested, even loaned me. i read old-man-late after that beautiful woman has gone to bed until i too am tired, and the eyelids flutter and the head nods.

i read out of several books at a time, wishing i could stay awake all night and pore over the pages in a fever like i did back a long time ago under the sheets with a flashlight to prevent my folks from knowing i was violating the sleep rules.

Something from which i would have spurned until now i find…intriguing, i think is the word: Literary History of the United States by erudite scholars Spiller, Thorpe, Canby, and Ludwig. i’m sure it was one of my college course books. i never read it. Now, i learn when learning is not required. Yet loquacious, a term for talkative, prevails in the writing, almost pompous, and i marvel at myself reading with pleasure such an academic tome.

i also have returned to favorites: Faulkner, Warren, Greene, Doctorow. i currently am re-reading David Maraniss book on Vietnam, They Marched to Sunlight.

i read several at a time. In addition to the history tome, and Maraniss, i’m near the conclusions of Robert Penn Warren’s Or Else: Poem/Poems 1968-1971, and Ibrahim Al Nashashibi’s Gratefulness: Messages from the Heart to the Mind (I have written before of Ibrahim’s books and his restaurant Farouz in San Diego. He was born in Jerusalem, has a Jewish and Muslim background, and is an amazing gentleman).

Saturday night after all the football games had gone to bed, i read a poem of Ibrahim’s, “The Vessel and the Traveler.” Ibrahim discussed the relationship between the soul and the body. As usual, it was thoughful and produced some deep considerations for me.

Then i picked up Warren’s book and read “Interjection #7: Remarks of Soul to Body.” As usual, Warren captures me with power of his images.

The poems were different. But they expressed a relationship about ourselves i have often wondered. And here were these two men from amazingly different times, locales, and backgrounds addressing the same themes. i was struck by reading them randomly on the same night.

Oh, i wish they could have met and talked about those two poems.

Of course, i and my brother Joe, would have to be sitting in the back of the room listening.

Reading this, don’t be concerned about my health, i have some issues, pretty much the same as anyone a couple of months from 82 will have. There are some procedures i will be experiencing in the next couple of months to address the most serious difficulties, but i plan on being around for quite a while. i am hoping to make it to almost 99 like my daddy did, but i’ve live a much harder, wilder life, so am not likely to do that. i do think about what’s next more than i should. i’m still having fun. i hope you are also if you are in my generation.

i feel aging embracing me
while sharpening the blades
i cannot see
that will eventually
do me in.

i shall not worry about 
what will take me away
for i know it will be earned
for what i’ve lived,
good things and bad things
regardless of intention.

the question is not
how nor when
but what remains
in my living
for i am blest.

one must step carefully
in this forest of diabilities piling up;
yet, at four score plus
a new vision of the world opens
for i have been there and remember.

i have seen the good and bad
over those years,
now, observing them
in the growing crowds 
of people, planes, automobiles,
concrete and steel,

i think i understand.
i know i cannot tell them
what they should be doing
based on what i’ve learned:
they are young, impetuous, headstrong,
knowing i do not know what it’s like nowadays,

which i do, of course:
i’ve walked down that road.

it matters not.
there is a warmth in knowing
i’m not in their squabbles;
knowing living, doing the right thing,
or making the attempt
is the key to feeling good in the long run.

So, i read the headlines, 
watch what they erroneously call news,
shake my head at their goofy plans
to make the world better,
which they can’t unless they
realize the depth of what i wrote above.

it is a pleasant world embracing me,
even with the discomfort of being
embraced too hard,
for, as my father said that i repeat:

i’ve had a good life,
have a good wife,
have great children, grandchild, and friends.
i just hope 
when i go,

i go quick.