Thankful in All Things

Its 3:30 in the afternoon, two of my kids are on the Interstate Highway system heading home, and I am nervous. The other two are already here and when they were on the road it was the same feeling. I wonder if it will ever be any different, like maybe when I’m 80. Will I still be glancing at the clock? Probably.

Thanksgiving is upon us. It has always been my favorite holiday. Although I love the great meal and being together with family, the day also brings with it a measure of guilt. I don’t always have a heart full of thankfulness on most of the other days of the year. I find it a challenge to be thankful for bad news when it arrives. Nevertheless, my faith teaches me that I am to be, thankful in all things. I’m told that during times of crisis our faith is most valuable and our reliance on God most comforting. Recently someone from the pulpit of my church called the difficult seasons of life opportunities for growth. From past experience and intellectually I know this to be true. But there is a vast chasm between the mind and the heart at the first introduction of crisis. So, it is a very good thing that Thanksgiving is on the calendar, as a steadfast reminder to give thanks for the blessings of life…and every fresh piece of bad news.

This year the gathering will be at Linda’s house. She’s my big sister and she has the biggest table. Still, there will be three rooms, three tables, and 26 mouths to feed. Linda is great at hosting these types of things. Everyone feels at home the minute they walk in, and the food is incredible. How she manages it all is the question. The same way Mom used to. It must be in the blood.

Most of you can tell a similar story. There’s a place you go, a special dish that’s your favorite, that weird cousin and obnoxious uncle. Most of us, the vast majority of those who read this blog are blessed with supportive families. However, there are many families where the holidays are a minefield of hurt feelings, resentments and hostility. I always think of them when the 26 of us are holding hands saying the blessing. Then there are those families who are struggling to put food on the table. For them, there is no Thanksgiving meal. Any meal at all would be a blessing. Its these people who my church attempts to help through our partnership with various food banks in the area. The fact that within a ten minute drive in any direction from our church there are hungry people should shame us. So this week we hit our goal of delivering over 4000 pounds—two tons of food to The Henrico Community Foodbank. It is a wonderful feeling, but the need never ends. 

Let Us Now Celebrate the Colors

Judging by the deluge of leaves that have fallen in my yard this weekend I believe it safe to say that the days of beautiful fall colors are coming to a close. This Fall season has been a banner year for the colors. Since returning from Maine I have encountered some of the most stunning trees I can ever remember seeing before. Since its impossible to pick a favorite, I have assembled my favorites for this blogpost to save them for posterity. Here they are in no particular order of loveliness…

For my friends who live in places like Southern California and Texas who don’t get the benefit of this type of beauty, I hope you enjoy this little slice of Virginia. Of course, you guys don’t have to get up leaves twice a week for two months either, so nature always balances the scales. Ironically, this last tree grows out of the ancient soil of the cemetery behind Bruton Parish church in Colonial Williamsburg. Odd that something so beautiful thrives among the bones of 280 year old dead men.

Big News

Ten years ago this month I started writing my first novel. I had no real idea what I was doing. All I had was a partial story inside of my head. It involved a guy who was a gambling savant, blessed with an amazing talent for winning games of chance. The story grew from what might go wrong with such a gift. In my character’s case it turned out to be practically everything, resulting in a divorce, a suicide attempt, and financial ruin. Along the way, both of his parents die on the same day, he is befriended by a uniquely gifted stray dog and ultimately discovers the healing power of forgiveness.

In the five months it took me to write it, my characters never failed to surprise, delight and disappoint me. Once I finished it, I was hooked on the rush that comes from creating a universe of people, places and events that all come together to tell a story. So much so that I have since written three more and am now working on a fifth.

I bring this up because recently I was introduced by a friend of mine to a publishing company he had worked with. He had mentioned my name and my work to his editor who then emailed me to introduce himself. Ultimately we met virtually where he asked me to give him a plot summary of all four of the books I had written. Then he asked me to send him the manuscripts from two of them. About a week later, he contacted me to tell me that Atmosphere Press wanted to publish…A Life of Dreams…the story I summarized above. 

Since then its been a whirlwind, signing contracts, emails flying around, the assignment of an editor etc..I’m told that the entire process will take 4-5 months before the final product will be in my hand and ready for sale. I have a ton to learn about this process since I know virtually nothing. So far the people at Atmosphere have been amazingly patient with my ignorance. I’m sure that over the next 4-5 months that patience will be tested.

Exciting times!

A Fun Two Weeks

My son came to town to run in the Richmond marathon. It was his second attempt at the race and he killed it. He beat last year’s time by nearly 20 minutes and beat his all time half marathon time by 11 minutes…

Then last night his wife Sarah prepared her famous charcuterie tray for our dinner. It was exquisite…

They will be staying with us through Thanksgiving, working remotely as well as going on some day trips together. Their pup, Frisco, is also here gracing us with his exuberant presence.



Its gonna be a fun two weeks!

What a Great Idea

This past weekend Pam and I had the solo stove fired up on the deck one night. After the sun went down it started to feel chilly out so it was perfect timing. The great thing about a fire is its hypnotic effect. As you watch the flames rise and wiggle themselves skyward it calms you. After a while you realize that you have not taken your eyes off the fire for half an hour. All of the conversation between us gets spoken into the fire. The words you speak seem more meaningful when spoken into the dancing flames.

At some point Pam starts telling me about something she saw on television or the internet about Black Friday, that particularly American embarrassment of greed. She told of someone who said, “Look, we all have big screen TVs now. Why do they put them on sale for Black Friday? If they really want to put something on sale for Black Friday why don’t they discount groceries by 50% for 24 hours?”

What an awesome idea. The inflation of the past 18 months has driven up the cost of basic groceries to the point where some families are truly struggling. Pam sometimes comes home from the grocery store with three bags, shaking her head when she comes in the door. “Guess how much these three bags cost? $125! It’s ridiculous!” For us, the rise in grocery prices is an annoyance, not a crisis. For others every trip to Publix or Food Lion is a gut-wrenching cost/benefit analysis.

This morning I saw where a friend of mine posted an idea on Facebook. You know how sometimes grocery stores will do buy one get one free promotions on random items? Well, this lady told how her store had one of those promotions on bags of potatoes. She loves potatoes but they don’t eat them fast enough to use an entire bag before some of them have gone bad. So, as she was standing in the checkout line she noticed the family in front of her looked like they might could use some help so she says to them, “Excuse me, there’s a buy one get one free sale on potatoes but my husband and I will never eat two bags fast enough before they go bad. Could you use this extra bag?”

What a fantastic idea. My church does a monthly food bank drive. They hand out special bags with a shopping list inside that provides ingredients for multiple meals for a family of four for one week. We fill the bags and bring them back to church the following Sunday. Each month we take a 3000 pound load of groceries to the Goochland food bank. In November there’s a special full Thanksgiving meal shopping list for a family of four, another good idea.

As we enter the holiday season we all need to think about the folks around us in our communities who are struggling with tight budgets. We need to come up with our own ideas about how we can help, we who have been given so much. Yes…there are government programs that help and yes…we pay taxes that fund those programs. But, why should we let the government have all the fun? Besides, with every government assistance program comes paperwork and bureaucracy, and as a result many people fall through the cracks. That’s where people like us, like you and me come in.

Make a fire one night this weekend. Sit under the stars and stare into it, giving thanks for your great good fortune. Maybe a great idea will come to you.

Temporary(?) Insanity

I’ve got a million things going on in my head this morning, none of them good. In a life full of ebbs and flows, insanity is flowing like a river at the moment. Seriously people, sometimes when I read the news I think I am a spectator at a theatre of the absurd. I look at headline after headline with slack-jawed confusion and embarrassment. How can any of this be happening? 

Of course, its not like this every day…thank God. Most days I’m busy tending my own garden. Most days my thoughts are occupied by plans for the future, friends, and family. But when the pace of life momentarily slows I have time to catch up on the world outside my small slice of it—and I have to say—the world has gone mad.

There isn’t even any one thing I can point to that illustrates the point. Its not one thing, its a Cobb salad full of things great and small that bring me to the conclusion that mankind has lost any connection to reality. Either that or insanity is the new reality. Since I don’t want to believe that, I’m going with the reassuring modifier, temporary insanity.

This morning I was confronted with two stark and honestly terrifying photographs. Were they of mutilated bodies in the Middle East? The agonized screaming faces of refugees from the God forsaken Gaza Strip? No. I was spared that catastrophe. But these two catastrophes were bad enough…

I was introduced to the bi-vocational mayor of a small town in Alabama whose other job was pastor of the local Baptist Church. She/He made the news when they shot their self in the head after their double life as a cross-dresser with an appetite for trans porn was outed on a blog. My mind is simply unable to wrap itself around something like this. Later on in my news skimming I encountered this actual headline:

Author comes out as trans MAN after spouse comes out as trans WOMAN

Again, I have no frame of reference for this despite 65 years of education, training and experience. Therefore I don’t know how to respond in any meaningful way. So I sit here dumbfounded. Gobsmacked. Perplexed beyond understanding.

Then there’s the second picture. I am told that oddsmakers in Vegas tell us that this is the most likely matchup in 2024’s presidential election despite the fact that overwhelmingly it is by far the most dreaded by the American people. Now, I know that what I am about to say is probably over the top and certainly the most reductionist reaction possible. But, people…if this happens, if these two men are once again thrust upon us in an election, we are finished as a nation. 

On the plus side, Patrick, Sarah and this guy…



…will be arriving this Thursday for a two week visit! They will be working from home while mixing in lots of side trips around our beautiful state culminating in being with us for Thanksgiving. So excited!!

Let’s Try a Risky Joke

I have decided to do something very risky. I’m going to tell a joke, but not just any joke. This one features an Imam, a Priest, and a Rabbi, and I’m telling it in the midst of a war between Hamas and Israel. Why am I doing this? Well, for starters, I think its a really funny joke. But I also think that humor is for all seasons. We seem to be living through the Era of Hurt Feelings, as the historians will one day refer to the early 21st century in America. Everyone seems aggrieved about one thing or another and those grievances are being worn on our shoulders. But I still hold to the conviction that reasonable people should be able to coalesce around a decent joke. I did not come up with this particular joke. But I should point out that it was told to me by a Jewish man.

So, an Imam, a Priest and a Rabbi had a standing tee-time every Wednesday morning at the local golf links. They played early in the morning and they liked to play fast. But on this day when they arrived on the first tee they noticed that a single golfer along with his caddy had just teed off first, ahead of them. They thought, “no big deal, a single won’t hold up our threesome.” The problem was that this single golfer was the slowest they had ever seen. Every single shot the caddy would meticulously line him up and talk to him at great length about each shot…it was infuriating! It ended up taking the Imam, Priest, and Rabbi over 6 hours to complete their round! When they finally finished all three of them stormed into the Pro-shop demanding to see the head pro. They began their complaints—“What the heck, Pro? It took us 6 hours to play our round because of the single slowest golfer we have ever seen. Their was no martial, no nothing. This is an outrage!

The Pro leaned over his desk and said in a soft voice, “Look guys…you do know that that golfer is blind, right?”

Immediately the Imam and Priest, looked completely embarrassed and ashamed. The Imam says, “Oh Allah, forgive me for my insensitivity. I promise that I will give a month’s pay to the American Foundation for the Blind” Then the Priest says, “Oh Lord, forgive my uncharitable heart. I too promise to give a month’s pay and I will have my church take up a special offering for Helen Keller International.”

After a short pause, everyone turned to the Rabbi who had fallen silent. Finally he looked at them and lifted his palms upward, “What?! He couldn’t have played at night?”