Past Articles from 2004 until last year. Many important lessons can be found in each of these articles.
So I went to lunch with Daniel Langston and Jonathan Redic the other day. Daniel was home on two week leave from the Coast Guard Academy, and I was glad he had a moment or two to spare for me. The three of us went to an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet - Daniel is a former varsity football player, and Jonathan is a growing boy (so am I) - so I wanted to take the guys to a place with plenty of groceries. At the end of lunch, the waitress brought us the bill and three fortune cookies. Fortune cookies are not traditional Chinese fare, as you may know, but are as American as burritos - so is the ritual of reading the wise, funny, or oddly pertinent things your fortunes say to those at your table.
We've all experienced it - that chilling, heart-stopping moment when you turn around and your parents are not there. You’re a five, or six maybe, and you are at a crowded department store, an amusement park, a county fair. You a walking with your parents and something catches your eye, so you stop, just for a moment, to look. But your parents do not notice, and so keep on walking. When you turn around, they are gone. You are trapped in a forest of faceless adults. For that moment, the blood in you veins is a cold as ice water. For that moment, there in that crowd, you are utterly alone.
As a person grows there are certain landmarks of maturity we recognize as important: learning to walk, to talk, to read, to ride a bicycle, to drive a car. There is graduation from High School, voting, getting married, becoming a parent, and piloting your own children through learning to walk, talk, read, ride a bicycle, drive a car. Recently I passed three landmark moments that signal my passage from youth to old age, from vigor to decay.
A few years ago we were visiting Teresa's brother Bill and his family who live in Tulsa, OK. We had gone early one Sunday morning to Bible class. The preacher was teaching the class, and after it was over, and I was shaking his hand I said to him: "It was good to have you with us this morning." To which he replied: "No, it was good to have YOU with US this morning." As a local preacher at a congregation with lots of visitors, I say that phrase (and mean it) countless times each Sunday morning, especially when meeting someone new. But that Sunday morning I was the someone new. My brain, however, refused to let my speech find a new pattern.
There is so much of interest at the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum in Washington, DC. - dinosaur bones, a blue whale, a bug zoo. The most visited exhibit, however, is on the second floor - it is the gemstone exhibit. The Hope diamond is there, and the jewels of Josephine Beauharnais. One has to wait in line most days to get a glimpse of the Hope diamond, rotating in its case. The jewelry exhibited along the walls similarly generates a crowd. If you go beyond this room - if you force your way past the jewelry exhibit you find yourself in a long, narrow room - generally empty of people, but filled with wonders.
