Sam’s Gap Overlook, TN/NC state line
“Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow.”
Alfred Tennyson, 1809-1892
Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
and one of the most popular English poets
Monthly Archives: December 2007
Stay Gold
Sunset from Horseback Ridge, Unicoi, TN
“I’m going to miss you guys. I’ve been thinking about it and that poem, that guy that wrote it, he meant you’re gold when you’re a kid, like green. When you’re a kid everything’s new, dawn…Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That’s gold. Keep that way, it’s a good way to be. I want you to tell Dally to look at one.
He’ll probably think you’re crazy, but ask for me. I don’t think he’s ever really seen a sunset.”
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton (1967)
Johnny’s letter to Ponyboy, just before Johnny dies
REFLECTIONS
I came across the 1983 movie version of The Outsiders while surfing the TV this afternoon. It flooded my mind with memories of watching the movie and reading the book as a young teenager. At the time, the young actors — now a Who’s Who of film and TV from the past two decades — caught my attention. What teenaged girl (or 30-something woman with nothing else to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon) wouldn’t want to watch a young Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, and Matt Dillon? But the story draws you in and it’s obviously about much more than watching a greasy version of the Brat Pack.
This year marked the 40th anniversary of Hinton’s book (for an interesting NY Times reflection essay, click here). Her story has always captured my attention — there’s something about how males interact together in friendships that intrigues me, probably from growing up with brothers — and more so now than ever. My adult life has brought me several encounters with youth and some with unfortunate situations and histories.
The reality of violence, abusive language, drug and alcohol abuse, and broken homes is a common one in every society and every city. (You may try to ignore it or pretend it’s only on the “other side of the tracks” but it’s everywhere, in every culture, and in every “level” of society.) It often leads to endless cycles that are difficult to break and often repeated by the next generation. Like Ponyboy and the Greasers, many of these youth have good hearts and sometimes some honest ambitions hidden deep below turmoil and fear. I’ve come to love several and tried to help a few.
I’ve discovered that their symptoms are different, but their illness is the same as mine and everyone else. We so desperately want to be loved and accepted. We’ll do almost anything for that. But if that doesn’t happen, then we run away — literally and/or figuratively — from the pain and loneliness. I don’t think it was coincidence that I happened to be reading a chapter called “A Suffocating Loneliness” in a Henri Nouwen book this afternoon as The Outsiders played in the background (yay, multi-tasking). Nouwen suggests that instead of running from loneliness or trying to fill the void, we should “protect it and turn it into a fruitful solitude.”
“The movement from loneliness to solitude is the beginning of any spiritual life because it is the movement from the restless senses to the restful spirit, from the outward-reaching cravings to the inward-reaching search, from the fearful clinging to the fearless play.” (Nouwen, Reaching Out, 35)
We’re all Outsiders trying to avoid the painful void.
Lee
Conviction
Unexpected Opportunity
“None of us knows what the next change is going to be,
what unexpected opportunity is just around the corner,
waiting to change all the tenor of our lives.”
Kathleen Norris
Best-selling author of The Cloister Walk,
Dakota, and Amazing Grace
Example
Everything
“I long to see everything, to know everything, to learn everything!”
Marie Bashkirtseff, 1858-1884
Ukrainian-born Russian diarist, painter, and sculptor
(Dying of tuberculosis at the age of 25, she lived just long enough to
become an intellectual powerhouse in Paris in the 1880s)
Appalachia
View from Round Bald, Roan Mountain, TN
“Mountain country places its mark on those who
dwell within its shadows…And thus it is with those
nurtured in Appalachia —they leave, but they look back,
remembering pleasant things. The land has claimed them,
and its ties will not be severed.”
The Appalachians (1965)
Maurice Brooks, 1900-1993
American educator and naturalist whose name became
synonymous with the natural history of Appalachia
Ah, the Holidays
“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring,
close-knit family in another city.”
George F. Burns, 1896-1996
American comedian
Christmas: A Bud Shall Blossom
“A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a
bud shall blossom. The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him. . .” (Isaiah)
“Our salvation comes from something small, tender,
vulnerable, something hardly noticeable…The small child
of Bethlehem, the unknown young man of Nazareth,
the rejected preacher, the naked man on the cross,
he asks for my full attention. The work of our salvation
takes place in the midst of a world that continues to shout,
scream, and overwhelm us with its claims and promises.
But the promise is hidden in the shoot that sprouts from the stump,
a shoot that hardly anyone notices.”
Henri Nouwen, 1932-1996
Advent: Waiting Together
“The visit of Elizabeth and Mary is one of the Bible’s
most beautiful expressions of what it means to form community,
to be together, gathered around a promise,
affirming that something is really happening…
The whole meaning of the Christian community
lies in offering a space in which we wait for what we have
already seen. Christian community is the place where we keep
the flame alive among us and take it seriously so
that it can grow and become stronger in us.”
Henri Nouwen, 1932-1996
Advent: Waiting in Openness
“To wait open-endedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life.
So is to trust that something will happen to us that is far beyond our own
imaginings. So, too, is giving up control over our future and letting God
define our life, trusting that God molds us according to God’s love and
not according to our fear. The spiritual life is a life in which we wait,
actively present in the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us,
new things that are far beyond our own imagination, fantasy, or prediction.
That, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life
in a world preoccupied with control.”
Henri Nouwen, 1932-1996
Advent: Waiting in Hope
“We are full of wishes, and our waiting easily gets entangled in those wishes…
Our waiting is a way of controlling the future. We want the future to go in a
very specific direction, and if this does not happen, we are disappointed
and can even slip into despair…But Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary were not
filled with wishes. They were filled with hope. Hope is something very different.
Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the
promises and not just according to our wishes.”
Henri Nouwen, 1932-1996
Advent: Waiting Patiently
“A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness
to stay where we are and live the situation out to the fullest in the belief
that something hidden there will manifest itself to us…Patient people
dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the
present and wait there…Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary were present
to the moment…That is why they could hear the angel.”
Henri Nouwen, 1932-1996
Advent: Waiting in the Moment
“Waiting is active. Most of us think of waiting as something very passive, a hopeless state determined by events totally out of our hands…But there is none of this passivity in scripture. Those who are waiting are waiting very actively. They know that what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing. That’s the secret. The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun.”
Henri Nouwen, 1932-1996
Anyway
Sunset over Limestone Cove, Unicoi Co., TN
“People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway. What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway. Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway. In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”
Widely attributed to Mother Teresa
Based on an original composition by Kent Keith (c) 1968, 2001
Enormous Advantage
“The rare individual who unselfishly tries to serve others
has an enormous advantage — he has little competition.”
Andrew Carnegie, 1835-1919
Scottish industrialist and major philanthropist
Advent: Waiting With Promise
“Waiting, as we see it in the people on the first pages of the Gospels, is waiting with a sense of promise…People who wait have received a promise that allows them to wait. They have received something that is at work in them, like a seed that has started to grow. This is very important. We can only really wait if what we are waiting for has already begun for us. So waiting is never a movement from nothing to something. It is always a movement from something to something more. Zechariah, Mary, and Elizabeth were living with a promise that nurtured them, that fed them, and that made them able to stay where they were. And in this way, the promise itself could grow in them and for them.”
Henri Nouwen, 1932-1996
Dutch Catholic priest and author
Help
”The whole trouble is that we won’t let God help us.”
George MacDonald, 1824-1905
Scottish author, poet, minister
Surroundings
View from the Beauty Spot, Unicoi, TN
“Ministering as opportunity surrounds us
does not mean selecting our surroundings,
it means being very selectly God’s in any
haphazard surroundings which He engineers for us.”
Oswald Chambers, 1874-1917
20th Century Scottish Protestant Christian minister and teacher
“My Utmost for His Highest”
One At A Time
“I never look at the masses as my responsibility.
I look at the individual. I can only love one person at a time.”
Mother Theresa, 1910-1997
Roman Catholic nun who ministered to the needs of the poor,
sick, orphaned and dying of Calcutta for over 40 years
The Secret
“Giving is the secret of a healthy life…
not necessarily money, but whatever a man has of
encouragement and sympathy and understanding.”
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., 1874-1960
Major philanthropist in New York City
and throughout the world
Not-so-Appalachia
Central Park, on a recent trip to New York City
“It couldn’t have happened anywhere
but in little old New York.”
O. Henry, 1862-1910
“The master of the short story”
Native of Greensboro, NC
Truth
“Now that we know these posts are level and true,
everything can be measured from them.
Once you know where true is,
it defines everything else that has to happen.”
Daniel (building a fence) in Blue Shoe
by Anne Lamott, 1954-
A Rural Scene
“As much as I converse with sages and heroes,
they have very little of my love and admiration.
I long for rural and domestic scene, for the warbling
of birds and the prattling of my children.”
John Adams, 1735-1826
2nd President
Protect Them
Black Bear Wildlife Habitat, Grandfather Mountain
“They too, are created by the same loving hand of God
which Created us…It is our duty to Protect Them
and to promote their well-being.”
Mother Theresa, 1910-1997
Roman Catholic nun who ministered to the needs of the poor,
sick, orphaned and dying of Calcutta for over 40 years
