Denomination Matters

Friday I mentioned that I had met a gentleman from East Tennessee.  This is Sunday and needs a Sunday story, a church story or a sermon.  Today I am going with the story.  The man said

My mama is eighty-two years old now, lives in the same house she has lived in for the past fifty years.  Mama attended a little church down the street which had operated on its corner of the village for more than a hundred twenty-five years.  But the church was dying, attendance shrinking, until only a handful of the old guard remained.  Well, six, seven years ago the inevitable happened.  The church closed its doors and my mama was devastated.  Wringing her hands and near tears she said to me, "What am I to do? That place has been my spiritual home for fifty years."

"Why, Mama," I said, "all you have to do is walk right straight across the street to that fine church just opposite your front door."

"But that's a Christian Church.  I have been a Baptist all my life, and I'm not about to become a Christian now!" 

Grandma, meet Grandma #T

I met a man the other day who said he was from East Tennessee.  I told him my mama's people were from East Tennessee.  Something in common.  We shared a few stories.  I told him an abbreviated version of this one.

My mother's uncle, her mother's youngest brother, married my mother's daddy's first cousin, a relationship which has no bearing whatsoever on the story, but it is interesting and something for you to puzzle over.  Mama's cousin, a granddaughter of this couple, told me this story many years after both the elders had passed.  She said

I did not know my grandmother chewed tobacco  until many years after her death. Grandpa and Grandma had dressed for an ocasion and Grandpa had gone ahead, was sitting behind the wheel of the car waiting, as men are wont to do.  Grandma came to the car, opened the door and got into the seat.  She reached back, pulled the door closed and died.  Grandpa realized she was gone and reached over, tenderly removed the chaw from her mouth.

Grandma was fifty-five years old.

My new acquaintance then shared this tale.

Our family has a big ol' reunion in the hills ever' summer. Always have eighty, hundred or more people.  To raise funds to continue the tradition we have an auction every year, the items mostly being family trinkets or heirlooms which get returned to the sale time and time again.  The item that brings in the most cash, ever' year for the past several years, is Granny R's spitcan.  She was the matriarch of the clan and has been gone now for twenty years.  Last year the can brought seven hundred dollars! 

Word of the day: chaw

Level It!

The cake is thinner in front

than it is in back

easily solved if two-layer cake,

A souffle though is hard to make.

Unlevel stove annoys the cook

so today we finally took

the time to solve the problem.

Well.  Sweat and struggle

might and main

Twist and turn an hour to gain

a semblance of levelitude.

For who installed it

Eyeballed it.

Workmen today, 

both suave and rough

 live by the mantra

"That's good enough."

Word of the day: levelitude 

(Okay, okay.  I made it up. Don't you like it, though?)

A semblance of levelitude

Comments on a Favorite Author

The presentation of Mark Twain's little story is concluded.  Grace wondered if I would have any remarks on it.

I am not a Twain scholar, but I have been reading and rereading in many cases most of his works since I was a lad.  I greatly admire and envy the man's facility with the English language.  I am taken with his humor and his ability to see and relate the funny side of life.  I recognize that he was shrewd and insightful and he often used his humor and his writing to skewer the foibles of humankind.  One of the best items I have ever read on people's understanding of wage/price economics is contained in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court,

I have not read any part of the recently published (two of three parts) autobiography which Twain demanded not be published for 100 years after his death.  Each of the first two volumes runs to over 700 pages, and I understand the third volume to be released later this year runs to almost 800 pages.

I started my Mark Twain collection when I was fourteen years of age.  I bought a thirty volume "Authorized Uniform Edition" in a used bookstore and hauled it home in a cardboard box, riding on a city bus.  I still have the set, except for ACYIKAC which I loaned to someone and never got it back. But my sister, Vee, went searching on-line and a couple years ago she presented me with the volume which matches my set.  What a sister!

To "The Five Boons of Life."  The first four boons, fame, love, riches, pleasure are temporal and fleeting.  The writer tasted of each of them and knew well that they did not bring lasting satisfaction. That the fifth, death, would bring fulfillment was a projection the writer was ill-equipped to make for he seems to have rejected any concept of a loving God, hence "emptiness," or "nothingness," i.e., non-existence must be the boon he cherished.  How sad.  A man of such power, such intellect, one who brought much (temporal) pleasure to so many could find no lasting satisfaction in life.

Twain did suffer mightily, did lose much that was important to him.  Yet he seemed to have no bulwark against cynicism and bitterness.

The tale was written in 1902.  His beloved wife died in 1906 after a protracted illness, his darling daughter in 1910, and he himself that same year.

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.  --Jesus of Nazareth, in The Sermon on the Mount(Mt.6 KJV)

Word of the day: skewer

The Five Boons of Life V

CHAPTER FIVE

The fairy came, bringing again four of the gifts 

but Death was wanting.  She said:

"I gave it to a mother's pet, a little child.  It was

ignorant, but trusted me, asking me to choose for

it.  You did not ask me to choose."

"Oh, miserable me!  What is there left for me?"

"What not even you have deserved:  the wanton

insult of Old Age."

Word of the day: wanton

The Five Boons of Life IV

CHAPTER FOUR

"Choose yet again."  It was the fairy's voice.

Two gifts remain.  And do not despair.  In

the beginning there was but one that was precious,

and it is still here."

"Wealth--which is power!  How blind I was!"

said the man.  "Now, at last, life will be worth the

living.  I will spend, squander, dazzle.  These mock-

ers, and despisers will crawl in the dirt before me,

and I will feed my hungry heart with their envy.  I

will have all luxuries, all joys, all enchantments of

the spirit, all contentments of the body that man

holds dear.  I will buy, buy, buy! deference, respect,

esteem, worship--every pinchbeck grace of life the

market of a trivial world can furnish forth.  I have

lost much time, and chosen badly heretofore but let

that pass:  I was ignorant then, and could but take

for best what seemed so."

Three short years went by, and a day came when

the man sat shivering in a mean garret; and he was

gaunt and wan and hollow-eyed, and clothed in rags;

and he was gnawing a dry crust and mumbling:

"Curse all the world's gifts for mockeries and

gilded lies!  And miscalled, every one.  They are

not gifts, but merely lendings.  Pleasure, Love,

Fame, Riches; they are but temporary disguises for

 lasting realities--Pain, Greed, Shame, Poverty.  The

fairy said true; in all her store there was but one gift,

How poor and cheap and mean I know those others

now to be, compared with that inestimable one, that

dear and sweet and kindly one that steeps in dream-

less and enduring sleep the pains that persecute the

body, and the shames and griefs that eat the mind

and heart.  Bring it! I am weary, I would rest."

Word of the day: pinchbeck

Bunch of Words from an Old Guy #T

I wrote the following list on the occasion of my eightieth birthday.  That has now been well over a year ago.  But I was rereading this and thought it not a bad Sunday school lesson.  Parts of it, anyway.  So here we go again.

One-third hundred thoughts on having lived eighty years.

1.  “All things in moderation” is bad counsel; some things should not be done.  (See Exodus, chapter 20)

2.  Use real butter and drink whole milk.

3.  “All things come to him who waits.”  Torpor, poverty, want. . .

4.  Common sense is often nonsense.  What we need is uncommon sense.

5.  Sugar, if you must sweeten.  Salt sparingly.

6.  Coffee.  Lots of coffee.  Decaf is not coffee.

7.  Nap.  A daily nap may not make you younger or prettier, but you will be easier to live with.  At least while you are napping.

8.  Be punctual.  Late is a waste of others time and disrespectful.  Early is a waste of your own time and frivolous.

9.  You cannot get back a minute of time.  Spend your minutes wisely.

10. Spend your money carefully.  If you gratify every whim, you will find yourself in need. 

11. When you sell your time to an employer, give him his money’s worth.  When you are on his clock, your time is his time.

12. Technology is a marvelous servant.  Don’t let it become your master.

13. Go to church, not to see or to be seen, but to reflect there and worship with fellow believers.  I’ve done it both ways, and going to church is better.

14. Whine not; neither carp nor complain.  All it will get you is a bad reputation.

15. It is true that you are judged by the company you keep.  Choose your companions carefully.

16.  Eat your spinach.  It is not only good for you, it is good.  And Popeye would approve.

17.  You are not Clark Kent, and there are no phone booths anymore.  Leave heroics to the super heroes, but in any situation, do what is right.

18.  If you don’t know what is right, ask for directions or assistance, but do something.

19.  Most people are ordinary; love them, but love the oddballs, too.

20.  Most people are ordinary-looking.  But the people at both ends of the bell curve need love, too.

21.  If you would have friends, show yourself friendly.  Dad drilled this one into me, and he got it from the Bible.

22.  Speaking of the Bible, many people misquote or attribute things to the Bible that are not in there.  Read it for yourself.  Often.

23. Ice cream!  Year 'round, and often.

24.  When looking for wisdom, or “how to live” counsel, you will find unlimited sources.

25.  A very small percentage of the counselors you find in this endeavor will be wise or worthy.

26.  Be nice to the unwise and unworthy anyway.

27.  Many are free with unsolicited advice.  Be kind to them, too.

28.  It is easy to be a cranky old person.  Just live a long time and run counter to a lot of this stuff.

29.  It is not so easy to be a kind old person.  But you still have to live a long time, and you have to work at it.

30.  And on that topic, “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”  What?  The fewer flies the better, and what a waste of honey.  And vinegar.

31.  Which reminds me, many clichéd sayings are simply silly if not ridiculous.  Think for yourself. However, because something is a cliché does not mean that it is wrong.  Again, think for yourself.

32. Sarcasm as humor tends to wear thin rather quickly.

33. If you can’t be kind, be quiet.

33¹/₃. Eat your broccoli, too.  It’s not so good as spinach but eat it anyway.

Put that on your turntable and spin it.

Happy birthday to my baby sister, Ilene.  She is many years younger than I, but I can't tell you how many since you know my age and the next rule is

34. Never reveal a lady's age. Don't even let her know that you know.

Dejazmach Kassa Wolde Mariam

Fall 1954, the start of my junior year in college.  A new dormitory opened on campus and my room assignment was in this facility.  That same autumn Ethiopian student Kassa Mariam transferred to SPC.  He resided on the same floor in the dorm, though while I was on the east wing, he was on the north wing.  A large commons area at the junction of these halls gave ample opportunity for social interactions.

Mariam's course of study took him in a different direction when we headed for classes. I was fascinated by the force of Casey's personality and by the fact that he hailed from such a remote part of the world, remote to me being anywhere outside the Western United States.

The one year concluded my contact with Mariam, for though he plowed ahead and graduated with our class of '56, I laid out a year and he had moved on to his career before I finished.  Briefly, Kassa Mariam, hereditary royalty in his own right, returned to his homeland and in 1959 he married  Seble Desta, granddaughter of Emperor Haile Selassie. with whom he had five children.  He served as private secretary to the Emperor.  Kassa was named founding president of Haile Selassie University in 1962. and following his tenure as president of the university, he was named Agriculture Secretary, the position which he occupied when Selassie was overthrown by the Derg.  

Kassa Mariam was imprisoned in 1974 and in 1979 he was executed.  His widow, also imprisoned, was released in 1988.

For more detail click here.
Open letter from Kassa's children regarding proposed pardon of Derg leaders.  Click here.

Kassa W. Mariam c.1934 - 1979 RIP

References:

Seattle Pacific Response

Wikipedia, Seble Desta
The letter linked above.

"Saturday, July 14, 1979, was the feast day of the Holy Trinity. Reports say that His Excellency Lidj Kassa Wolde-Mariam (“Lidj” is the Ethiopian equivalent of a British “lord”) was led from his cell and went to his knees before fellow prisoner and priest, Patriarch Abune Tewophilos, who gave him absolution. Kassa rose and followed his executioners to the appointed spot where Amaha believes his father was strangled to death. Some reports say that his confessor died with him in the same mannr."  Seattle Pacific Response, linked above as more detail.