I chose this picture of great expectation to set the stage for a description of a brother at the center. He is a late thirties man who has done many things; good and bad. He was successful in business and at one point had a car dealership; he also roamed the streets gang banging dodging bullets when younger; he has served in the church (I think as a youth pastor), and he was in strong man competition where he ultimately broke his back and became addicted to pain meds. Now he is in our program after losing everything material, but still has his marriage in tact.

So, what does the picture above have to do with this brother? I’ll tell you; if you were to have the chance to meet him, he would be of the mind set that the Holy Spirit had brought you to him and that the Holy Spirit was going to manifest Himself in some way at the meeting. I see him every morning, a mountain of a man, and he is handsome, composed, and friendly with a radio voice as he man’s the center’s phones. I look forward to talking with him because this spirit of anticipation permeates him with each encounter. He is there to do business with God and he has no doubt that each person that walks in the office is an opportunity to see God work. You can’t help but be drawn in by his amiable smile and eager anticipation. To tell you that God rewards his anticipation, words fail to express. Nearly every morning one of us, or both, ends up in tears or leaves with a heart full of God’s presence. He is child-like in his faith and God pours out blessing in return. This brother has truly left his mark on me and represents the scripture that exhorts us to be ready in season and out; he is genuine, low keyed and full of the Holy Spirit that splashes all over the office while he’s there.

What a blessing, what a blessing.

Photo by Vrindaavan Lila

There is a law in physics to the effect that action is equal to reaction. The ball rebounds from the wall with precisely the force with which it was thrown against the wall. And if I approach a man with politeness I usually receive politeness.I get from this world a smile for a smile, a kick for a kick, love for love, and hate for hate.

If I am petulant, unrestful, irritable, unsatisfied, wretched, and bored – I know what the crop will be, and might have expected the harvest when I sowed that seed of self-indulgence, lack of will, moral cowardice, and general selfishness.

If I am lonely, it was I who drove hearts away.

If I am bitter, it was I who skimped the sugar-bowl.

The loving are beloved.

The generous are helped.

The considerate are considered.

The bully by and by is bullied, the smasher smashed.

And the end of the hog is the slaughterhouse.

I like this little piece because I'm always looking for practical quotes to share with the guys at the center. There is such a variety of personalities, but one thing they all have in common, self-absorption. I have to admit that a certain fella came to mind when I read "The bully by and by is bullied, the smasher smashed." And if this piece is true, his end is........well, not good.

Dr. Frank Crane, photo by formalArt

I like this quote by John Newton; he is so free to share his weaknesses and his humble approach to the weaknesses we all share is refreshing. Here he speaks to the folly that fills our minds, even when we are in the most holy circumstances.

"Indeed, all situations and circumstances (supposing them not sinful in themselves, and that we are lawfully placed in them) are nearly alike. In London I am in a crowd, in the country I am sure there is a crowd in me. To what purpose do I boast of retirement, when I am pestered by a legion in every place? How often, when I am what I call alone, may my mind be compared to a puppet-show, a fair, a Newgate, or any of those scenes where folly, noise, and wickedness most abound! On the contrary, sometimes I have enjoyed sweet recollection and composure where I could have hardly expected it. But still, though the power be all of the Lord and we of ourselves can do nothing, it is both our duty and our wisdom to be attentive to the use of appointed means on the one hand, and on the other, watchful against those things we find by experience have a tendency to damp our fervor or to dissipate our spirits."

Painting by Mark Bryant

"There is something about a stringed instrument that makes it more human than all others.

The violin has a soul. The voice of the violoncello is a spirit's cry.

A tone's a tone, of course, just as a man's a man; yet as some men have kingly and prophetic spirits, and some are but little better than animals, so some tones come all surrounded with suggestions, enclosing strange implications, attended by spiritual connotations, drenched with mystery, dripping with the waters of the infinite.

I wonder if it is the catgut? Does this fragment of a dead animal become the medium speaking to us the unknowable secrets of that darkness into which animal-souls go when the body dies?

When I hear a skillful cellist draw his bow across the string, the sound that penetrates me is not like that of a drum or a harp-string, but it is a veritable voice, the voice of one calling across the lake of tears in my heart."

This little essay comes from a book titled "Four Minute Essays" by Dr. Frank Crane.

I found it rummaging around antique stores last week on a trip to the coast. The post below this one comes from the same book. A delightful, thought filled little book, quite a find for six bucks.

Picture by Alexander Kharlamov

There is no way to get the values of the countryside so good as walking. If you have a horse he gets in between you and the glory of the landscape, and if you whiz along the road in an automobile, you had as well, save for the fresh air, be at a moving picture show. Only when you walk do you get the personal, minute, and intimate acquaintance with nature.

It is even so in our intellectual life. When we think along with a political party, a religious sect, a literary cult, or an artistic school, we may be said to be traveling by train through the land of ideas. When we leave all groups and creeds and plunge alone into life’s problems, see and determine things for ourselves, and form our own tastes and persuasions, we may be said to walk.

There are times, perhaps most of the time, when we must perforce go by train; the affairs of society and the state being too complex for individual capacity. We must possibly vote the party ticket, go to church, join the literary crusade, and co-operate in this or that group; but we should reserve the right to go often upon an independent ramble.

“There are men,” writes Hamerton, “whose whole art of living consists in passing from one conventionalism to another, as a traveler changes his train. To them intellectual independence is unintelligible. Why go afoot when you may sit comfortably in a train, a rug around your lazy legs and your head resting softly in a corner?”

When I read this I thought about my friend Soto launching out on a new path alone, "upon an independent ramble." There is a certain degree of fright to it but that is overtaken by the fresh newness of it all and the energy that is generated by discovery and adventure. May he "walk" in green pastures.

I was in my office yesterday morning typing out a quote to share with some of the guys at our daily meeting before work when there was a knock at my door and in came Soto with a brother new to the program. He had been praying with him upstairs because the new fellow was feeling discouraged, then he said, let me take you down to Fred and see if he has a word for you.” So as he entered and asked me I said, “Well imagine that, I’m just typing out that very word”.

Here’s that quote --

“God hath given his laws to rule us, his word to instruct us, his spirit to guide us, his angels to protect us, his ministers to exhort us. His mercies make our weak efforts instrumental to great purposes, as a small herb the remedy of the greatest diseases. He impedes the devil’s rage and although he allows him to walk in solitary places, and yet fetters him that he cannot disturb the sleep of a child; He hath given him mighty power, and yet a young maiden that resists him shall make him flee away; he hath given him a vast knowledge, and yet an ignorant man can confute him with the twelve articles of his creed; He gave him power over the winds, and made him prince of the air, and yet the breath of a holy prayer can drive him as far as the utmost sea….”

Jeremy Taylor, photo from the Internet

The following two posts are taken from a book titled "The Imperial Highway", written in 1881. While working with the guys at the center, even though this book was written over a hundred years ago, I can't help but laugh when I see the same behaviors at the center. Certain men come immediately to mind, whom I will leave unnamed, but the pride and folly of man hasn't changed much with "evolution". Of course I saw nothing of myself in either of the posts...... ;)

"There are many kinds of idle young men. One can be seen almost any day haunting sunny benches or breezy piazzas. The real business of this fellow is to see; his desire, to be seen; and no one fails to see him, -- so gaudily dressed, his hat sitting aslant upon a wilderness of hair like a bird half startled from its nest, and every thread arranged to provoke attention. His is a man of honor; not that he keeps his word, or shrinks from meanness. He defrauds his laundress, his tailor, and his landlord. He drinks and smokes at other men’s expense. He gambles, and swears, and fights, -- when he is too drunk to be afraid; but still he is a man of honor, for he has whiskers, looks fierce, and wears moustaches."

I had to laugh at the line about "hair like a bird half startled".

Photos taken from the Internet

"Another young fellow is rich, has a fine form and manly beauty, and the chief end of his life is to display them. With notable diligence he ransacks the shops for rare and curious fabrics, for costly seals, and chains and rings. A coat poorly fitted is the unpardonable sin of his creed. He meditates upon cravats, employs a profound discrimination in selecting a hat or a vest, and adopts his conclusions upon the tastefulness of a button or a collar, with the deliberation of a statesman.

Thus caparisoned, he saunters in fashionable galleries, or flaunts in stylish equipage, parades the streets with simpering belles, and delights their itching ears with compliments of flattery, or with choice-culled scandal. He is a reader of fiction, if it be not too substantial.

He is as corrupt in imagination as he is refined in manners; he is as selfish in private as he is generous in public; and even what he gives to another, is given for his own sake. He worships where fashion worships, today at the theater, tomorrow at the church, as either exhibits the whitest hand or the most polished actor. A gaudy, active and indolent flower, until summer closes, and frosts sting him, and then sinks down and dies unthought-of , unremembered, and unspeakably wretched."

I thought I had written about one of the most alarming experiences I had at Teen Challenge about three months ago, but apparently I have not. It was a cold rainy day and the guys called me because a man about thirty was standing right outside of our front door barefooted in the rain and cold, and yelling at the cars as they drove by. He continued for some time when I reluctantly decided I needed to go out and see if I could help him; or at least get him to go away and stop running off all my customers. I asked the students to pray for me because he was a tall guy and I could see he was not in his right mind. I cautiously walked up to his side and asked him if he needed any help. He had a vacant look in his eyes, he was terribly thin and his speech was off in many directions but he was willing to come inside where it was warm and I promised to get him some dry socks for his shoes which were sitting on the sidewalk. Once he came inside about six of the brothers and I, circled him and tried to see if we could help. He was wasted on Meth or some other drug and half of what he said made no sense whatsoever. Luckily one of the visiting Pastors was at the center, and old fellow with lots of experience, so I had one of the guys go and get him, pronto! When Pastor Glen came, he and I led the fella to a more private spot in the store where we could sit down and talk. It was as though we were talking with the demon possessed man that Jesus talked with named “Legion; for many demons had entered him.” What was most alarming to me was that his head was filled with scripture, he quoted the Bible, talked about reaching the lost, spoke with boldness and yet he heart was absolutely vacant; nothing of God resided there, the drugs had cast out all that was holy and he was enslaved, bound with chains and shackles.

I noticed some cuts on his arms and asked him if he would mind pulling up his sleeves; he didn’t mind and he exposed cuts and scratches that covered his entire forearms. Hundreds on each arm. I asked him about it but he was oblivious and off telling me a mile a minute, how he goes into the adult book stores and preaches.

I have never felt more helpless and ill-equipped. None of us got anywhere with him and after the director of the center came to speak with him I bowed out feeling useless and disturbed by the horrid drug state that he was in and although I have seen old men who seemed to have lost their minds I have never seen a young man so mentally disturbed. Ultimately he went back out and disappeared down the street.

That was about three months ago and I have thought about that incident from time to time especially when guys are first admitted to the program and many look just horrible; scrawny, dirty, and lost.

As I was sitting in my office on Friday one of the guys brought a young man back to see me. He was a nice looking fella, big smile, bright eyed and bushy tailed about six feet tall and 190 pounds. He asked me if I remembered this man.

I didn’t think so but there was something about him that seemed familiar; turns out it was the same guy that I had tried to help three months ago. What a contrast! I could barely believe it was the same man. He was level headed, gained 40 pounds of muscle, now in a program and free of drugs. It was a miracle, I just couldn’t get over the contrast. I had to ask him, “What was it that caused you to change?”

He gave me a two word answer, “The law”. He then described how he was picked up by the police and put in jail where he could detox and be ministered to by a jail minister and re-dedicated his life back to Christ. It was an amazing transformation and I still can’t get over the change.

Photo by Stephen Oachs

"A man of polite imagination is let into a great many pleasures, that the vulgar are not capable of receiving. He can converse with a picture, and find an agreeable companion in a statue. He meets with a secret refreshment in a description, and often feels a greater satisfaction in the prospect of fields and meadows, than another does in the possession.

It gives him, indeed, a kind of property in everything he sees, and makes the most rude, uncultivated parts of nature administer to his pleasures; so that he looks upon the world, as it were in another light, and discovers in it a multitude of charms, that conceal themselves from the generality of mankind."

I really enjoy Joseph Addison, considered to be the greatest literary mind of his time. This little piece comes from a chapter on imagination and he just wets my appetite and makes me want to reach out and do more creative things. No question in my mind that the arts, poetry and reading good books are so many tools to help us see deeper into our world and "discover in it a multitude of charms."

Picture from the Internet

There are, indeed, but very few who know how to be idle and innocent, or have a relish of any pleasures that are not criminal; every diversion they take is at the expense of some one virtue or another, and their very first step out of business is into vice or folly. A man should endeavor, therefore, to make the sphere of his innocent pleasures as wide as possible, that he may retire into them with safety, and find in them such a satisfaction as a wise man would not blush to take. Joseph Addison

I chose this picture by Subir Basak to illustrate two of the innocent pleasures I enjoy most in life; children and water. This amazing picture captures both subjects in a most spectacular way.

I was on my son Eric’s blog looking up the post he wrote about being visited by angels unaware to share with a brother named Soto. The subject of the post was a Hispanic man and a large black woman, the one who crept in and the other who came in like a blustery wind to his church. Each stayed just long enough to be noticed, aided and then off they went to who knows where.

Soto loved the post and we discussed it a little. Then two days later, when I arrived at work, Soto hurried to me and told me that the evening before he and a friend went to Wendy’s to get a hamburger and when they took their seats they noticed what appeared to be a homeless man eating at a table alone. The man was entertaining himself with imaginary figures and movements with his hands all the while smiling and laughing in a very approving manner. As they put their food on the table they also noticed another apparent homeless person, this time an older woman with long coat and a pile of possessions wrapped in plastic bags.She was also busy entertaining herself with melodic conversation. As this scene was observed by Soto he began to sense a powerful presence of the Lord and a remembrance of the blog post I shared with him and he excitedly shared his thoughts and feelings with his friend who also began to sense the presence. During the dinner they made eye contact with both of the “angels” and as they left, Soto engaged the woman with a cordial word and blessing while his friend gave a gift to the homeless man.

This "chance meeting made a deep impression on Soto and just as if to seal the lesson, the next evening that very angel (woman), came into the Thrift store shopping. He rushed up to me eagerly and called me over to observe this woman. We greeted her heartily and I'm sure she had no idea why she was getting the royal treatment by us....... or did she?

Photo by Marjorie Smith

I ran across the following quote the other day and was tempted to continue past it without a clue of what the author meant. But I decided not to let it get away that easily so I begin to poke and jab at it turning it on its side and rolling it around until I was determined to understand it. I worked on it with the aid of the dictionary for five or ten minutes until I captured his meaning. I enjoyed it so I decided to print out a dozen copies and give it to the guys at the center for something to do with idle time and the next morning we would talk about it. None but one was able to figure it out and I was with him as he read it, considered and then prayed for light. In less than three minutes he captured the meaning, and this man with only a sixth grade education!

“Be thou in the van of circumstances, yea, seize the arrow’s barb before the pent string murmurs.”

I felt that 1^st Corinthians 16:13 was a similar meaning.

"There is but one method of attaining to excellence, and that is hard labor;

and a man who will not pay that price for distinction had better at once dedicate himself to the pursuits of the fox, or sport with the tangles of Neaera's hair, or talk of bullocks and the glory in the goad."

Sydney Smith

When I first ran across this quote it completely baffled me. The pursuits of the fox, tangles of Neaera's hair and glory in the goad went right over my head. But as I thought through it and looked up Neaera's hair I came to the conclusion he is saying; if we won't work we had better learn to be sly like the fox or find hiding behind others or learn to like being goaded all our life.

In Henry Ward Beecher’s chapter titled Christ the Deliverer, he gives this practical story of the importance of personal involvement.

“Ah, are the Zebedees, then, so poor? John, take a quarter of beef and carry it down, with my compliments. No, stop; fill up that chest, put in those cordials, lay them on the cart, and bring it round, and I will drive it down myself.” Down I go; and on entering the house I hold out both hands, and say, “Why, my old friend, I am glad I found you out. I understand the world has gone hard with you. I came down to say that there is nothing wrong between you and me. We are on good terms, just as we always were. You have one friend, at any rate. Now do not be discouraged; keep up a good heart. I have brought you down a few articles for your comfort” And I empty all the things, and I see tears beating in his eyes, like rain on a pane of glass in summer; and I go away as soon as I can – for, hard as ingratitude is to bear, it is not so hard to bear as gratitude. And when I am gone, the man wipes his eyes, and says, “I did not know how I should feed my children, and I am thankful for the meat and the other things; but God knows that that man’s shaking my hands gave me more joy than all that he brought. It was him that I wanted.”

I tell you, when men are in trouble, it is the human soul that cures and feeds. It is one soul lying against another.

This was epitomized by the old prophet, when he went into the house where the widow’s son lay as one dead, and put his hands on the child’s hands, and stretched himself across the child’s body, and the spirit of life came back. Oh! If, when men are in trouble, there were some man to measure his whole stature against them, and give them the warmth of his sympathy, how many would be saved!

Photo from the Internet

"When you see the men or women consecrated to severe tasks, or the painful office of visiting human miseries and binding wounds, remember that these beings are made like you, that they have the same needs, and that there are hours when they require pleasure and forgetfulness."

The following quote from Charles Wagner's book "The Simple Life", is such a practical word regarding placing our sympathies: the entire book is one that should be read by all.

"Offer your sympathy, also, to all who have absorbing occupations, and who are, so to speak, riveted to their places. The world is filled with sacrificed beings, who have never any rest or pleasure, and to whom the most modest interval of rest does them an immense good. And it would be so easy to secure this minimum of alleviation for them if one only thought of it.

But the broom is made to sweep with, and it seems that it cannot feel fatigue.

We must get rid of that culpable blindness which hinders us from seeing the weariness of those who are always in the breach. Lift up the sentinels lost in their duty; procure an hour for Sisyphus to breath in.

Take, for a moment, the place of the mother of a family whom the cares of the home and children enslave; sacrifice a little of our sleep to those who watch long hours by the bedsides of the sick. Young girl, whom perhaps going on a walk does not amuse, take the cook's apron and give her the "key to the fields."

Thus you will make others happy and be so yourself.

We walk forever by the side of beings loaded with burdens that we could take upon ourselves, even if only a little while. But this short pause would suffice to cure the evils, revive the joy almost stifled in many hearts, and open a large career to good will among men."

This fantastic photo taken by Anuar Patjane.

Now the following piece convicts me because, as I have aged, I have lost much of my gaiety and frolicsome nature. I do have young grandchildren and so this piece applies to me as much as those with children still at home. I do think it is a timely and important reminder, written in 1904 by Charles Wagner in his important book "The Simple Life".

"In the next place I wish to ask you to observe that you are mistaken in imagining that young people amuse themselves too much. Apart from those fictitious, enervating and disuniting pleasures which blast the life instead of making it blossom and become radiant, there remains today but little.

Our children are the heirs of a world that is not gay. We give them the legacy of great cares, embarrassing questions, and a life loaded with shackles and complications. Let us at least make an effort to light the morning of their days. Let us organize pleasure, create shelters, and open our hearts and our homes. put the family into your game. Let gaiety cease to be a an imported commodity. Reunite our sons whom our morose inward manners drive into the streets, and our girls who grow weary of solitude. Let us multiply family gatherings, receptions and family excursions, lift good humor among us to the heights of an institution."

Photo from the Internet

I happened upon this piece by Professor David Swing, and in it he encourages Americans to learn their native tongue thoroughly. I struggle so with all the authors he lists in this piece and although I don't know how far I would take his conclusions, it sure made me think.

The prevailing idea among the upper American classes that even their little children must learn French, and to that end must speak it at the table, is highly blamable, for reasons more than one. It is based upon entire ignorance of the fact that it will require the life-time of each mortal to master the language of his birth and country. All the young years given by Americans to the study of French are years turned away from the greatest language yet known to man. All the acquisitions of the human race, all the sciences, and arts, and histories, and sentiments of humanity have passed into the English tongue….. He that has perfectly mastered his own language has a store of information immense in bulk and rich in value. To excavate many channels for a river is to lessen the unity and power of the stream otherwise majestic. It will always be proof of some blunder of judgment, or of some stubborn vanity, when Americans will be found using a little French and German and Italian, who have not mastered the English of William Wirt, or of Tennyson, or of the eloquent Ruskin.

It is not a room full of violins, but the power to make music. It is therefore simply painful to hear a fashionable girl or woman or man combining several languages in conversation, when the listener knows well that this bright talker could not by any possibility compose an essay in the English of Washington Irving, or Charles Sumner, or the poet Whittier.

Even when a whole life is given to one’s native English or native French, so inadequate still is that language to express the soul, that it seems a form of wickedness to divide the heart between many masters, and to have no supreme friend. Chateaubriand, the greatest master of the French tongue, when he stood near the Niagara Falls almost a hundred years ago, ands saw evening coming down from the sky upon all the sublime scene; saw the woods growing gloomy in the deep shadows, and heard the sound of the waters increasing its solemnity as the little voices died away in the night’s repose, said: “It is not within the power of human words to express this grandeur of nature.” Skilled as he was in a most rich and sensitive form of speech, that speech , all of whose resources he knew so well, now failed him, and his spirit had to remain imprisoned, there being no gateway by which its sentiments could escape to the heart of his countrymen. What are you and I to do, then, if we have not loved early, and late, and deeply, our own English -- that English which is now the leader in literature and all learning; if we have not mastered its words, its elegancies, its power of logic, and humor, and pathos, and rhythm, and have not permitted our minds to become rich in its associations; if we have for years gone along with a heart divided in its love, or with a mind that has studied words more than has thought and prayed, and laughed, and wept, amid the sublime scenes of nature, or the more impressive mysteries of mankind? “Parlez vous Francais?” Not well; not at all; would to Heaven we could learn to speak English!

I was reading a sermon by Rev. F.W. Farrar, who I have never read before, although I find I have a copy of his commentary on the life of Paul in my library. Anyway, this piece was on the moral conditions at the time of Christ and shortly thereafter; and the thought of the pagan moralists of the time, such as Seneca, Epictetus and Aurelius. The vivid descriptions of the brutality towards slaves during that time is horrific. Rev. Farrar is liberal in his thought and his conclusion was far more generous than I ever hear from the pulpit. I found it......merciful.

“The morality of paganism was, on its own confession, insufficient. It was tentative, where Christianity is authoritative; it was dim and partial, where Christianity is bright and complete; it was inadequate to rouse the sluggish carelessness of mankind, where Christianity came in with an imperial and awakening power; it gives only a rule, where Christianity supplies a principle.

And even where its teachings were absolutely coincident with those of Scripture, it failed to ratify them with a sufficient sanction; it failed to announce them with the same powerful and contagious ardor; it failed to furnish an absolutely faultless and vivid example of their practice; it failed to inspire them with an irresistible motive; it failed to support them with comfort, hope and happy immortality after a consistent and moral life.

Seneca, Epictetus, Aurelius, are among the truest and loftiest of pagan moralists, yet Seneca ignored the Christians, Epictetus despised, and Aurelius persecuted them. All three, so far as they knew any thing about the Christians at all, had unhappily been taught to look upon them as the most detestable sect of what they had long regarded as the most degraded and the most detestable of religions.

There is something very touching in this fact; but, if there be something very touching, there is also something very encouraging. God was their God as well as ours—their Creator, their Preserver, who left not Himself without witness among them; who, as they blindly felt after Him, suffered their groping hands to grasp the hem of His robe; who sent the rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with joy and gladness. And His Spirit was with them, dwelling in them, though unseen and unknown, purifying and sanctifying the temple of their hearts, sending beams of illuminating light through the gross darkness which encompassed them, comforting their uncertainties, making intercession for them with groaning which can not be uttered. And more than all, our Savior was their Savior, too; He, whom they regarded as a crucified malefactor, was their true, invisible King; through His righteousness their poor merits were accepted, their inward sicknesses were healed; He whose worship they denounced as an “execrable superstition,” stood supplicating for them at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”

Photo from the Internet.

I ran across the picture of this woman, who I believe is from Ethiopia, and was captured by her beauty and interesting ethnic style. I have seen many photos of those from this people group and the red soil which they incorporate in their beauty styles is so unique. It makes no difference where in the world people are from, a sense of beauty is valued by all. The woman below is doubtless very proud of her latest fashion as well.

Top photo by Heinz Homatsch, bottom photo by Justin Grant.

"Do you not know how many things you can do under personal influence that you cannot in any other way? My father said to me, when I was a little boy, “Henry, take these letters and go down to the Post Office with them.” I was a brave boy; and yet I had imagination. And thousands of people are not as cowardly as you think. Persons with quick imaginations, and quick sensibility, people the heavens and the earth, so that there are a thousand things in them that harder men do not think of and understand. I saw behind every thicket some shadowy form; and I heard trees say strange and weird things; and in the dark concave above I could hear flitting spirits. All the heaven was populous to me, and the earth was full of I know not what strange sights. These things wrought my system to a wonderful tension. When I went pit-a-pat along the road in the dark, I was brave enough; and if it had been anything that I could have seen, if it had been anything that I could have fought, it would have given me great relief; but it was not. It was only a vague, outlying fear. I knew not what it was. When father said to me, “Go,” I went – for I was obedient. I took my old felt hat, and stepped out of the door; and Charles Smith (a great thick-lipped black man, who worked on the farm, and who was always doing kind things) said to me, “Look here, I will go with you.” Oh! Sweeter music never came out of any instrument than that. The heaven was just as full, and the earth was just as full as before; but now I had somebody to go with me. It was not that I thought he was going to fight for me. I did not think there was going to be any need of fighting, but I had somebody to lean on; somebody to care for me; somebody to help and succor me. Let anything be done by direction, let anything be done by thought or rule, and how different it is from its being done by personal inspiration.”

There's a lot about this little story that tickles me, but what strikes me most is the sweet music that Charles Smith made to this youngster. It takes me back to my boyhood and memories of my uncle Jack, who would play this music to my ears on so many occasions. Whether it was something I feared or just to eliminate boredom, his company meant so much to me. The power of personal presence, it just cannot be over estimated.

Henry Ward Beecher - Photo by Taci Yuksel

The name above every name

"If the God that you beheld in imagination when you were converted, before whom you fell down rejoicing, and to whom you surrendered yourself, is the best that you have, woe to you! You have not grown since you came out of the nursery, and you stand in the orchard of truth without growth. A true man has a better and better God every year."

H. W. Beecher

So it is in respect to dispositions, and in respect to character at large. Little cracks, little flaws, little featherings in them, take away their exquisiteness and beauty, and take away that fine finish which makes moral art. How many noble men there are who are diminished, who are almost wasted, in their moral influence! How many men are like the red maple! It is one of the most gorgeous trees, both in spring, blossoming, and in autumn, with its crimson foliage. But it usually stands knee-deep in swamp-water.

To get to it, you must wade or leap from bog to bog, tearing your raiment, and soiling yourself. I see a great many noble men, but they stand in a swamp of faults. They bear fruit that you would fain pluck, but there are briars and thistles and thorns all about it; and to get it you must make your way through all these hindrances.

Faults are also dangerous, in their own way, because they have insect fecundity. They are apt to swarm. And though a few of them may not do much harm, when men come to have a great many of them they will avail as much as if they were actual transgressions. It is not necessary that there should be wolves, and lions, and bears in the woods to drive hunters out of them. Black flies, mosquitoes, or gnats will drive them out, if there are enough of them. These little winged points of creation make up what they lack in individual strength by their enormous multitude. You might kill a million, and make no impression upon them. Faults oftentimes swarm and become strong and dangerous by reason of their multitude. Multitude, in such cases is equivalent to power.

This little piece really made me stop and ponder. Ouch.

Henry Ward Beecher - picture from the Internet

The following advice is from the book "Our Home" written in 1899 by Charles E. Sargent, M.A. I think its still pretty good advice for our modern times.

Home as a natural institution has for its primary object the nurturing of those tender buds of promise which can mature in no other soil. The human bud, unlike that of the flower, does not contain its future wholly wrapped up within itself, but depends much upon the hand that nurtures it. The rosebud, no matter in what soil it grows, no matter what care it receives, must blossom into a rose. No care or neglect, at least in any definite period of time, can transform it into a noxious week. But on every mother’s bosom there rests a bud of promise, and whether or not that promise shall be fulfilled depends on her. Whether that bud shall blossom into a pure and fragrant rose or into the flower of the deadly nightshade, is at the option of the guardian.

Let every mother act as if she held a bud of promise. Let those who have not felt the premonition attribute it to their insensibility. Better a thousand times bestow your tenderest care upon an idiot, better believe that you held the bud of genius and awake to bitter disappointment, than to learn in the end that you have failed to do your duty, and that a genius grand and awful like a fallen temple lies at your feet in the pitiful impotence of manifest but unused power.

The crying sin of modern parents is their unwillingness to let their children grow. They wish to transform them all at once from prattling infants into immortal geniuses. They have more faith in art than in Nature, in books and schoolrooms than in brooks and groves.

Painting by Elizabeth Nourse

I was reading a chapter titled "The Education of Our Boys, in a book called Our Home and he is describing the values of education, natural and academic; and after offering hope that most can find a way for an education, the author offers principles to those who are the least likely to get educated --

“At any rate, all may become well educated. Those men are almost numberless who have become great and useful by the light of a pine torch, who have learned the science of mathematics with a stick for a pencil and the ocean beach for a slate.

But suppose we meet the barefoot boy in the street picking rags, what word of advice have we for him? He will listen to all our fine talk about grand possibilities which are offered to the poorest and the worthiest in our great communities; he will listen to the story of those great souls who have climbed to glory over fence rails and canal boats; and when we have finished he will meet us with the question, “What shall I do and how shall I begin?”

Let us see if we can answer these questions. As the first step toward the desired result, he can pick up a rag, just as he has been wont to do, and examine it, not as heretofore with the simple purpose of determining whether he shall put it into one or the other of two baskets; but he can make it a text-book with which to begin an education. He can ask those older and wiser than himself what it is made of and how it is made. They will point him to the great mill yonder, where, if he tells his purpose, he can gain admission and learn something of the mechanical principles involved in the manufacture of the rag. If he continues to make inquiries until he can trace a piece of cotton through all its transformations, till it comes out a piece of fine bleached cotton, he has surely begun an education in earnest. He can save a penny a day for a few days and buy a primer, and with that primer under his arm he may politely approach any lady or gentleman with these words, “I am determined to make the most of myself. I want to learn to read. I have bought a little book. Can you give me any advice or help?”

There is not a man or woman in all that great city with a heart so hard as not to be melted to sympathy by that appeal. He would be astonished at the amount of love and sympathy and philanthropy in the world which he before had considered so cold and heartless.

Young man, -- bootblack, rag-picker, obscure farmer boy, or dweller in the dingy haunts of the city, -- remember that Freedom’s goddess holds over your head a crown. But she never puts that crown on any but a sweaty brow, -- the royal symbol of effort and worth.”

I found this picture of Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller on the internet and found it so charming and full of devotion. Her story certainly verifies the authors principles.

The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth

There are three generic conditions under which a man may hold his soul.

The first is where those instincts and passions which belong to our animal nature, and whose normal sphere is upon the material globe, predominate, and give tone to character. Under such circumstances, men are always sensual, -- fleshly, in scripture language. They live by the force of their material organization.

But as men come under better influences, there grows up an intermediate state, a mixed character, in which force alternates with higher and better feelings. Under great excitement, the physical qualities predominate; but in times of quiet, and away from temptation, there grow up milder influences, nobler sentiments. The result is that there is an occasional outburst of feeling, and also an occasional experience of sweetness and peace. It is, in such circumstances, an alternating condition of the mind, which results in great strife and conflict between the one part and the other – between the higher and the lower nature. And the greater part of men in civilized countries live in this intermediate condition, in which the animal is not predominate, and in which the spiritual is not predominate, but in which sometimes one and sometimes the other rules, neither having free course.

Then there is a final state – the highest we know of – that in which the moral sentiments completely rule. When these higher qualities give expression to the whole life—to the face, to the tone of the voice, to the language; where they surround the very soul, as with an atmosphere; where the whole nature is saturated with faith, hope, love—with truth, equity, benevolence – there is an air given to men, of strength in gentleness, of courage in sweetness, of activity in tranquility, of will without obstinacy, of self-confidence without conceit.

All these qualities may exist in the individual, and over them all there shall be a luminous refinement, a spiritual glow, which saves the soul from the charge of insipidity and flatness, and gives it authority and vitality. When the soul is completely under the dominion of these spiritual emotions, it shines. It impresses all that come near it. It rules whatever is within its sphere. In short, the spiritual is to become supreme in authority. And that which makes us men- not that which makes us animals – gives the color and tone to the whole life and character.

It is the atmosphere of the spiritual nature of man, or that appearance and those qualities which we see when the man is under complete control of his higher moral sentiments, which is what Jesus meant by “meekness”.

Matt, when I read this I immediately thought of the woman who was director at the AIDS orphanage where you took Carissa and I. I think so many of these qualities were evident in her.

I love to read Robert Louis Stevenson for pure entertainment. His insight into people just tickles me and he is always busy looking into the quirks and differences in people. Here he is talking about a good friend while they are on an ocean liner trip.

"If he had one taste more strongly than another, it was to study character. Many an hour have we two walked upon the deck dissecting our neighbors in a spirit that was too purely scientific to be called unkind; whenever a quaint or human trait slipped out in conversation; you might have seen Jones and me exchanging glances; and we could hardly go to bed in comfort till we had exchanged notes and discussed the day's experience. We were then like a couple of anglers comparing a day's kill. But the fish we angled for were of a metaphysical species, and we angled as often as not in one another's baskets. Once, in the midst of a serious talk, each found there was a scrutinizing eye upon himself; I own I paused in embarrassment at this double detection; but Jones, with a better civility, broke into a peal of unaffected laughter, and declared, what was the truth, that there was a pair of us indeed."

I ran across this quote by Robert Louis Stevenson where he was, as always, busy contemplating the nature of men. Here he makes some intriguing comments about the reformed drunkard whose life and identity is wrapt up in abstinence.

"Hence the comparative success of the teetotal pledge; because to a man who had nothing it sets at least a negative aim in life. Somewhat as prisoners beguile their days by taming a spider, the reformed drunkard makes an interest out of abstaining from intoxicating drinks, and may live for that negation. There is something, at least, not to be done each day; and a cold triumph awaits him every evening.”

I had to think that through a few times, visualizing a prisoner taming a poisonous spider, so at least at the end of the day he could say he was not bitten, which is some “cold triumph” that he can feel good about. Now the drunkard or drug addict is not the only one who becomes preoccupied in negatives; I ran across this quote about Christianity that is equally as stinging –

“Mr. Mills says, in his book on Liberty, that “Christian morality is in great part merely a protest against paganism: its ideal is negative rather than positive, passive rather than active.”

So my point; the recovering addict, who has made tea totaling his goal and his only goal, to abstain from the bite of abusing again, it becomes the focus and can be the entire goal of life to abstain, or as Stevenson puts it, “He may live for that negation.” So at least at the end of the day, although he has done nothing for others, he has, at least, this cold triumph. Now initially this is a most commendable goal, but at some point one must move on to living a positive life with offensive goals, concerns for others and not just saving one’s own soul or sobriety.

So in like manner, Mills quote that Christianity has reduced itself, in large part, to merely a protest against paganism, is the same principle, isn’t it? We do little to change the world, but we protest much, be it political issues, school policies, permitted words and lyrics, and of course those nasty agendas of the “gays”.

So in our idle time we boast of not being bitten by the spider, and with great conviction protest the ungodliness of the day, but booing the rival team that is carrying the ball will never win the game. One must play offense as well as defense.

Freaky picture of the black widow taken from the Internet, man spiders freak me out.

The Name above every name

"Now when we are calculating God’s goodness, we must take measure by the family, according to Christ’s own declaration. On one occasion he taught the disciples on this very matter. He said to them, after giving them some other instruction, “if ye being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him!” What is the exact logical position here? When you argue from a man to God, you are accustomed to say, “Ah! That is not a fair argument – God is a different being.” “No,” says Christ, “take whatever is good in man and argue that God is not only that, but infinitely better than that. In fashioning your conception of God, make it as resplendent in justice, as august in truth, as noble and pure in love, as radiant and wondrous in pity, and as enduring as you please. Never be afraid that you will over draw the divine character. God is never better in your thought or imagination than he is in himself. You may pile on, and pile on, as much as you please, and your descriptions of God will not transcend, but will come short of, the reality. When you heart is warmest, when it is noblest when it is truest, when it is best, when it flashes out its ideal conceptions of God, that ideal is far more likely to be near the truth than one that is coldly, critically, philosophically deduced from definite premises. For God’s nature really outruns the human capacity for reasoning."

This piece affirms thoughts I began developing a number of years ago. I believed the emotions of compassion within men's hearts was a God given thing and that His level of compassion must far exceed ours. I saw within me a repulsion to see anything suffer, be it man or beast. How then can one reconcile this with the doctrine of eternal torment?

Henry Ward Beecher - Painting by Norman Rockwell.

“Now, in the midst of this vast and ever-unwearied breaking of the surge on the shore of experience, how cheerful, how joyous are the words of God!

There is one reason why the Bible will never be upset just as long as the world lasts. You may prove to me that there is no such thing as inspiration; you may prove that this Book was dug out of a rock; you may destroy the prophet’s authority; you may take from the apostles their authority; you may take away the theory that the Bible came in any sense from God. Yet there is that in this Book which will keep it intact and make it potential as long as there is a heart to feel sorrow or to beat with hope. It is its humanity. It is its courage. It is the might and power of its love. It is the vast sympathy which wraps mankind as the atmosphere wraps the globe.

It is its thought and care for men in all their wants. For the poor, the needy, the weak, the helpless, the crying, the sighing, the discouraged, the down-trodden, the unvictorious, the captives, little children, mighty monarchs, peasants, nobles – for all men – there is here a throb and a yearning. There are thousands of blessings held out to them – strength, bread, fruit, water, wine, swords, spears – everything for humanity—whatever they need in their masterly struggles in this world. This Book is an ark into which men will run, as long as the world stands, for succor and consolation. And who should have made such a Book as this, as a way cast up on which “the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads,” if it be not God?”

I love this quote by Henry Ward Beecher; it describes my feelings so well. "It is its humanity", displayed in every loving way Christ talked and walked among men. Let them say what they will, He walked into my life hearing "a throb and a yearning", and I can never deny it.

Photo by Krzysztof Buchowicz