"How did it go so fast you'll say as we are looking back.
And then we'll understand that we held gold dust in our hands." Tori Amos
Chapter Five (continued) The Golden Years
The awful truth (as in awe and wonder) is that I may not be entering my "golden years", I may be entering my "golden months" or "golden days" or "golden hours." God knows. Because of the realities of life and death, because of the realities of cell division, the circulatory system, lane changes, ballistics and aerodynamics, I have become acutely aware of the brevity of existence. I wake up thankful every day to be alive. I go to sleep grateful for having been given another day. But I hope to be entering my "golden years." Because of a significant amount of planning from years ago the "golden years" are a possibility for us. But when the book of my life is written, if these words are, in fact, the remnant of my golden hours, I will have died content. This spot where I sit is my happy spot. Thanks to Toshiba, Intel, Microsoft, our electricity provider, our cable provider, Facebook, Netflix, Spotify and Bose, I have a portal to the world. No ticket or passport required. And this world has a portal to me. I'm in this portal now. I explore this world hour after blissful hour, day after day. But I can't write this chapter because this chapter hasn't happened yet. Someone else will have to finish Chapter Five.
Chapter One: Enterprise, Alabama
I spent the first nineteen years of my life in Enterprise, Alabama. In 1953 I was born at Gibson Hospital. In August of 1973 I left town in my grandfather's Oldsmobile to move to Birmingham, Alabama. Well that's where I thought I was moving. Looking back, I was moving just north of there to Jasper. The nineteen years between 1953 and 1973 could, in so many ways, be "the story of my life." If my life had ended that August of 1973, I would have lived a full and vibrant existence. It would have included my family and extended family. It would have included so many childhood friends. It would have included an elementary school, a junior high, a high school and a junior college. It would have included two churches, my family's church and first church where I was the music director. There is not enough space in this short book to begin to line out my lifetime in Enterprise. It was indeed a wonderful life.
Chapter Two: The New Prospect Baptist Church
As I said, I left home to move to Birmingham. There I transferred as a junior from my junior college to Samford University. In June of 1976 I graduated with a five year double major of music education. But in retrospect, it was that part-time job I accepted that shaped my life in more dramatic ways than school itself. I actually drove to Jasper, fifty miles north of Birmingham, and led the music at the New Prospect Baptist Church the weekend before I started classes at Samford. As a student I was on campus through the week and maintained eighteen semester hours, but in many significant ways I lived in Jasper. After church one Sunday night before I drove back to school, I met a girl.
Chapter Three:Seminary
Several months later I asked that girl from Jasper, Alabama to marry me. We both graduated in June of 1976 and got married in October.. In August we moved together to Louisville, Kentucky where I enrolled at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Although I did serve as music director of a church and that relationship was important, it was the seminary education that was most remarkable part of those two years. Musically and academically I excelled in every way possible. I found my wings. Besides the educational and performance opportunities at school, I performed twice with the Louisville Symphony and Opera Association. That kid from Enterprise did himself proud. And my grandmothers in Enterprise were proud too.
Chapter Four: The Years 1979 to the Present
And then in May of 1979, we left Louisville and moved to Rossville, Georgia. And six years later we moved five miles down the road to Ringgold. These years are not just a book, they would be volumes of books. Four different churches. A hospital where my wife worked. Several different jobs. Another college degree. Another hospital where my wife works. Back in '81, a son--he rolled over. he's walking. he's talking. school, baseball, basketball, band, girlfriends.graduation. Another graduation. Another graduation. He gave us a granddaughter. Which made me a grandfather. No words. And then there are grandchildren to whom we are not related. Well, at least their is no trail of DNA. Home. Work. Church. Home. Books.Friends. Restaurants. Home. Alabama. Concerts. Books. Friends. Florida. Movies. Restaurants. Family. Arkansas. Work. Home. Books. Alabama. Church. Movies. Indiana. Work. Books. Concerts. Missouri. Church. Family. Restaurants. Home. Indiana. Friends.Home. Indiana. Family. Indiana. Work. California(we didn't see that one coming). If these words, starting with "Home", were links, then you could read a remarkable story. You would find remarkable people doing remarkable things. There are no ordinary people or ordinary places in this story. They are all remarkable. And in the center of this story you will find me. And that's remarkable. Because I'm so ordinary. I'm from a small town in southeast Alabama famous only for its statue to an ordinary bug--a boll weevil. In 1920 a group of men in Macon, Georgia started the first commercial crop dusting company. They formed the company for one reason--to eradicate the boll weevil in the Mississippi delta. They knew it as the Huff Daland Dusters. We know it as Delta Airlines. That's remarkable.
Chapter Five
In just the past two weeks. there has been a terrorist bombing of a Russian airliner, suicide bombings in Beirut and a terrorist attack in Paris. Not to mention thousands of other lives lost to senseless killings here and around the world. And now the military retaliation has begun. Who started it and who's retaliating? Cain killed his brother over an argument about meat and potatoes. This has been going on a long, long time. How can I be so selfish tonight to be thinking about the significance of my own life? How can I be so insensitive to the realities of the world to say that that life is good? That any life is good? In light of all the killing and horrors, to say that my story even matters? To say that any story matters.
This is where I live. There is no where else to live. Interstellar travel is still some years away. But if the movie is any indication, we take our problems with us to outer space. Human nature, for better or for worse, doesn't change.
I have a granddaughter. This is where she lives. She has no where else to go. Am I supposed to tell her to run for cover, hide under a rock and to not come out until the killings stop? Should I tell her the truth? That the killings will never stop? When she writes the story of her life, I certainly hope that Chapter One is simply "Greensburg, Indiana" (she probably won't remember W. Lafayette).
We are entering our "golden years". I've never known why retirement was called that--Golden Years. Don't you have as many problems in retirement as during any other time of your life? Just because you're not working as much, does that somehow mean every day is full of magic and wonder? Does that somehow make all your emotional, mental and relational issues just go away? Not that, relatively speaking, we have all that many.
The "golden years"? It took a song by Tori Amos and an elementary school basketball game in Greensburg, Indiana for me to understand.
They are all golden years.
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