I’m sure you’ve seen the videos coming out of Nepal and the path of destruction left by a flash flood that really defies imagination. The scale is hard to believe.

I’ve been drawn to following the relief efforts and have been marveling at some of the stories of survival. Just yesterday I read of the headmaster of a school who helped save the lives of over 1,500 children with quick thinking and decisive leadership. With just minutes to respond, he directed the children to higher ground. Not one was lost as the water, rock and mud destroyed their little village.

I suppose I’m so interested because I’m connected to Nepal after having done a couple of short-term mission trips there a few decades ago. My son also spent a summer in Nepal meeting and getting to know the people there. I’ve remained in contact with our guide at the time, and he and I stay in touch. I also have a friend here who leads trips there each summer.

Landslides are common in Nepal. On my second trip there, our journey into the Himalayas on foot was disrupted by a landslide that took out the trail on the Annapurna Circuit and forced us to reroute on a very sketchy temporary trail to get through the debris field.

The rugged terrain and unpredictable weather make for a precarious journey.

But this one is different, at least for a couple of reasons.

One, the sheer volume of devices able to collect video imagery has provided the world a viewpoint that was previously impossible.

Two, this event seems to be on a scale that has not been seen, at least in recent memory.

The stories of those lost are pouring in, and the heartbreak is palpable.

As someone who has spent, albeit briefly, some time in the region, it’s especially significant to me.

I learned much about the people of Nepal while I was there, particularly the Tibetan population of the high mountains.

They are a people who live a harsh existence. What I observed, however, was a people who were remarkably resilient.

Commerce is done by foot. In the villages that I visited, anything produced outside of the valleys they lived in was transported by either humans or donkeys porting goods up the steep mountain trails. The process takes days. I saw very small men carrying hundreds of pounds of goods, from 10-foot pieces of rough timber, to cases of Coke, office desks and cages of chickens. All carried up thousands of feet, one step at a time.

I saw families working farms on terraces hacked out of the sides of mountains at 9,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level, growing food to sustain them through the harsh winters. They also eat a lot of yak cheese, which has a strong taste but is filled with energy needed for a day’s journey through the Himalayas.

I saw them play games at village festivals, shooting bows and arrows at a target for money, with the loser having to take a shot of some type of Himalayan bootleg moonshine.

I shared meals with families in their homes who offered me and my friends the very best they had, even though they could barely afford to feed themselves.

I experienced communities that looked after each other, because that’s really all they had. There was no government apparatus that provided meaningful support. Not necessarily because the government is that bad, but simply because of the geography.

What I’m attempting to get to, dear reader, is that these people earned my utmost respect. It’s the kind of admiration you only come to by being there, I suppose.

In many ways, their attitude about life reminds me of the similarities with the people of Appalachia, where I have spent the majority of my life traipsing around.

Disasters are no respecter of nations or people. They come and go as they do.

Nearly two years ago, the remnants of Hurricane Helene devastated a quarter of North Carolina, and though many have lost their memory of that event, the people of Western North Carolina are still putting the pieces back together. There are still roads washed out and closed, bridges that are still out and homes that are yet to be rebuilt or repaired.

And the crazy thing is, this is in the supposedly richest country in the world, with the most resources. And yet the recovery here continues.

What will become of the people of Nepal, one of the poorest countries in the world? Combine the lack of resources and the inhospitable environment, and how long will the recovery take?

Will they ever recover?

I read that over 12% of all of Nepal’s power-generating capacity was either damaged or destroyed overnight, with 14 hydroelectric plants made nonoperational with this one event.

Imagine the mammoth logistics involved in rebuilding this, but now without the roads that were along the river to transport goods. It’s overwhelming to think about.

Imagine the need for food in these affected communities. Imagine the people who cannot communicate with the outside world, who had to move to higher ground and are trying to figure out how to simply survive day by day.

Now consider this. There are disasters somewhere in this world we live in every single day. Somewhere, every day, a fellow human of yours and mine is experiencing disaster.

It’s kind of mind-boggling.

I think some would say, “Well, it’s not happening to me, so I’m good.”

This might be true, but I suppose those who are experiencing disaster today might have said that same thing yesterday.

The point is that any time another human being experiences loss, destruction, trauma, whatever we want to call it, it should move us first to compassion for those in the midst of suffering.

Compassion because they are all humans made in the image of God. They deserve dignity and should be valued.

The word compassion, literally rendered, means to “suffer with.”

When we see the floodwaters rage, the bomb damage assessments, the fire-stricken communities, or diseases running roughshod through some place far away, it should move us to suffer with those affected.

If we lose this ability to “suffer with” and grow jaded, it leaves our conscience seared and calloused, and the world becomes less.

Compassion is rooted in a self-giving love that is rooted in the God who is love. He’s given us this communicable attribute, the capacity to love, which is at the root of the dignity of the human race.

Compassion rooted in love leads us ultimately to some kind of action.

After Helene, I watched people respond in at least three ways. They prayed. They gave. And they went.

Those same choices are before us now.

1. We can pray. Nepal is halfway around the world, and it’s unlikely you will get on a plane and go help rebuild. But you can beseech the God who is love for provision, for food, for clothing and for shelter for those affected. Let your compassion drive these prayers. Anyone can pray at any time. You don’t even have to be churchy to do so.

2. We can give. It matters not how much. There are relief organizations already clothing, feeding and caring for those affected by this tragedy. I’ll list a few reputable ones in the notes below.

3. We can go. If you have the means, the strength and the skills needed, perhaps going is your response. There will be hard and sometimes thankless work ahead for years to come. If you go, go with people who know the needs and are already doing the work.

But perhaps there is something that comes before praying, giving or going.

We have to pay attention.

When I see the images coming out of Nepal, I have faces to put with them. I remember the families who fed us. The men carrying lumber and cases of Coke up those mountain trails. The farmers working those terraces. The people shooting bows and arrows and drinking their Himalayan moonshine.

I see people.

But what about the places I’ve never been? The people I’ve never met?

Do we have to know their names before their suffering matters to us?

Ways to Help

Nepal Red Cross Society
Emergency response teams are providing water, shelter supplies, first aid and other necessities to affected communities.

UNICEF Nepal Flood Emergency
Providing emergency assistance to children and families, including clean water, food, medical supplies and shelter.

This article started as a brief homily I delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church in Statesville NC. I thought I’d share it with you.

There are questions in life that we answer without giving much thought. What have you been up to? What’s the weather lookin’ like? What time do we need to be there?

But there are also questions that we answer that tell us something about ourselves.

In Matthew 16, Jesus asks his disciples two questions that do just that, reveal something.

These two questions sound very similar.

1. Who do people say that the Son of Man is?

2. BUT, who do you say that I am?

And I think everything that follows turns on this: Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, and because He is the living One, even death does not have the final word.

The first question Jesus asks is broad and far-reaching. Perhaps it could be akin to what is being said about this on social media. What’s the consensus out there? What do the polls say about the Son of Man? The disciples give good answers for what they’ve heard and maybe what they even believe.

The term Son of Man, primarily understood from the prophets Ezekiel and Daniel, was a term that Jews in Jesus’ day would be familiar with. As we can see in the text, Jesus is referring to himself as Son of Man here.

The disciples reply with John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. These aren’t bad answers at all, but they just don’t encompass all of Jesus.

Today the opinions of Jesus are still varied. Some say a good moral teacher, perhaps a guru, a prophet, a counterculture revolutionary, one who champions the poor and marginalized, and the list could go on. Are these wrong? Not necessarily. But let’s just say, not enough.

If Jesus asked us today, who do people in 2026 say that I am, we could spend all day developing that list. But Jesus, in asking this question, is not interested in polling data.

He turns the question slightly from out there to in here.

He uses that word that changes everything, “BUT.”

But who do you say that I am?

I wonder what their faces said when he asked this. Perhaps they all looked at each other with questioning brows.

And then our friend Peter speaks up, as he does so often.

You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.

Jesus responds with something like this: You didn’t just make that up. This was revealed to you by the Father, the living Father.

The Father enabled Peter to connect the dots.

This term, living God, was not foreign to Peter. He had heard it before. Listen to the prophet Jeremiah: “But the LORD is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King.”

Peter has known about the living God but now has firsthand knowledge of seeing the living God in human skin. He’s seen sickness healed, the blind seeing, the lame walking, storms calmed. He’s seen Him love the marginalized and untouchable, speak truth to power. Eventually Peter will see him hung on a tree, die, be buried, and raised from the dead.

The dots are now connected.

Jesus affirms him in a dramatic way and says something super interesting.

He says, “On this I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

This thing on which He will build his church is the confession, the proclamation that just erupted from Peter’s mouth.

Think of it as one of the first creeds.

This is only one of two times in the Gospels where Jesus uses the word church, or ekklesia in the original. Don’t get hung up on the word church. It simply refers to a community of people that are aligned with this confession.

Jesus then says that the gates of Hades will not overcome this community built on this confession.

This area in Caesarea Philippi was known for other deities, to include the deity of the Emperor of Rome and its nationalism. It was also a center for the worship of the Greek god Pan. There was a cave there associated with Pan and the realm of the dead.

Oddly enough, Pan is also where we get our word panic. Pan was believed to stir up sudden fear and terror, the sort of fear that could send people or even armies into confusion.

Think about the contrast.

Jesus stands in a place associated with false gods, political power, fear and death, and Peter confesses Him as the Son of the living God.

Don’t miss what Jesus is doing by connecting the dots.

The church, the community of those connected to the living God and confronted by fear and death, is not governed by either one. Pan might represent panic. Hades might represent death. Rome might represent earthly power.

But Jesus is the Son of the living God.

We as a church, a community, have been answering the question, “Who do you say that I am?” for two millennia now.

We say in the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.”

We say in the Nicene Creed, “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ.”

The creeds are the way the church answers the question, “Who do y’all say I am?”

We don’t make it up or, as Jesus said here, “Not of flesh and blood.”

It has been, is being, and will continue to be confessed and revealed going forward.

We inherit this confession and spend our lives figuring out how it plays out in daily life.

There are Sundays when the confession is pretty easy. There are other weeks when it is not.

This week I stood with my brother-in-law and his family around a hole in the ground where we laid his brother to rest. And last Wednesday, when I was riding my bicycle with my best friend from the Army, I discovered later that just about 40 miles from where we were, a reckless driver ran through the Milligan University cycling team, killing two and injuring the rest, 11 in total.

I don’t have an explanation for these deaths, but I do have a confession of truth. Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. When Jesus speaks of the resurrection, He says of His Father, “He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”

Our faith does not pretend death isn’t terrible. It does speak to us that it does not have the final say.

Because ours is the living God.

So I’m going to give you some homework, if that’s OK.

There won’t be a test.

Find Matthew 16:13-20.

Find 10 minutes. No phone, no TV. In a quiet, comfortable place. Clear your head of the news. Let your concerns fade for a bit.

Read the passage again slowly.

Instead of hearing Jesus say to Peter and the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”

Imagine He’s with you, asking in the most compassionate way anyone has ever asked you anything:

“People say a lot of things about me, but who do you say that I am?”

Sit with it for a while and make your confession in the light, because we’ll need it when times come where it’s not so bright.

And remember what Peter confessed that day: Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

And because He is the living One, whatever darkness we may encounter, whatever grief we may carry, even when we find ourselves standing in the shadow of death, death does not have the final word.

The living God does.

I saw the two goats waddling through our backyard, and something looked different, way different….

My dad bought two goats back in the 70s, pygmy goats that my brother and I grew attached to. Nanny and Janny were their names.

Together we built them a pen attached to the back of our storage barn where tools and gardening supplies were housed, along with our red International 140 Farmall tractor. It backed up to 100 acres of hardwoods.

The remnants of that pen are still there, but the woods have been thinned to accommodate new homes, progress I suppose.

The goats became a part of the family. They were less livestock and more pets than anything.

Steve and I would butt heads with them with football helmets on. We’d walk them up the street on long chains like dogs. The neighborhood dogs were curious about them but were never aggressive, as far as I can remember.

They’d eat down the weeds and briars, and they’d eat other things too.

They got used to the home we made for them and would hang around without being fenced or tied up, at least sometimes.

My dad was a builder of homes. Late one afternoon, he stepped out of his 70s-era GM pickup with a check as payment for services rendered to a customer.

Suddenly, it was gone as one of the goats snuck up behind him and stole the check out of his hand and consumed it in short order. Dad had to go back to the lady the next day and explain the whole sordid tale.

I thought that was the only tale of check eating goats, but my mom just told me recently that the same thing happened to her when she was trying to pay one of our coaches for his services!

Goats are voracious eaters, and they’ll eat about anything. I never saw ours eat a tin can however. Steve and I used to love watching them eat the leaves off the tender plants along the edge of the woods. They had grippers, not the biology term I’m sure, on their lips, almost like little teeth that allowed them to grab leaves like a wood chipper sucking in a log.

We were amazed at how quickly they could strip a little sapling clean. They’d stand on their hind legs to get at the higher branches. They were athletes!

In our little barn, we kept their bagged feed, which we got at Beaver’s Country Store. Beaver’s was a family-owned general store where you could get anything from fresh-cut bologna, a cowboy hat, .22 long rifle ammo and, yes, feed for your critters.

They had a loading dock off to the side, and I always thought it was cool to help load big sacks of feed and fertilizer in the back of a pickup. It made me feel like a grown-up man to do that kind of work.

We fed our goats mule feed, thick with grain, corn and molasses. It was sticky sweet, and the goats loved it more than anything in the world.

We had a rope and a closure to bind the big double doors together to hold them closed. As I said, goats will eat about anything, including a rope to hold barn doors closed, and they did one day when they were loose.

Steve and I couldn’t find them out back or in the woods, but then we noticed that the doors to the barn were cracked open slightly.

We investigated and found that both Nanny and Janny were feasting on the 40 lb. bag of mule feed, which was now about ¾ empty, with half the bag eaten away and feed strewn all over the floor. Those goats were in heaven.

The only problem is that evidently goats don’t have an off button when they are eating, and they had eaten way too much. I think they each weighed about 35-40 lbs., and we estimated that in that one afternoon they’d eaten about half their weight in very sweet, molasses-soaked mule feed.

They were swollen and huge. They had to waddle when they walked, and they looked waterlogged. When Dad got home, he fussed at us for leaving the barn door open, which was anathema. We tried to show him the evidence of the eaten rope, but he wasn’t buying it.

The side effects of their gluttonous banquet were digestive in nature. Dad was pretty sure they’d get constipated after eating all that and called the vet, Dr. Blackwelder. He was a farm vet and knowledgeable in such things.

His remedy was the same remedy anyone used for that condition. Haley’s M-O, milk of magnesia and mineral oil. It came in a blue bottle and it had a a weird blue tint to the thick liquid as well. If you ever drank it, you can remember the disgusting, chalky, thick liquid with just enough hint of mint to make it even more awful. It said on the bottle “The Gentle Laxative, Antacid and Lubricant”….descriptive!

Dad put the Haley’s in a feeder bottle with a nipple on it. We were suspect as to whether they’d drink it, probably based on our aversion to that concoction.

But they did, and they gulped it down like it was some delicacy. As I said before, goats will eat anything.

The effects of the medicine achieved its desired effect sometime later, and as you can imagine, there was quite an eruption that I’ll refrain from detailing here.

The goats also loved flowers. Particularly geraniums. Our neighbor, an older lady, and my father had a strained relationship. I’m not sure why, but she was kind of mean.

She had prize geraniums.

You probably see where this is going.

One day we didn’t get the goats up in the pen because we were too busy doing something important like shooting BB guns.

They evidently explored their surroundings and found the geraniums in front of our neighbor’s home. A weed eater could not have done a better job of clearing all those beautiful red blooms from every single plant, and there were a lot of them.

Unfortunately, it was my dad who discovered this incident when he was checking the mail and our neighbor, probably not in a kind way, informed him as to the damage the goats did to her property.

We were informed that the goats had to go, and it was devastating.

I don’t remember being angry with Dad. I think by then I was old enough to understand what he was telling me, even if I didn’t much like it.

Dad had a friend who had a big farm further out in the country from us.

We loaded up the goats in his pickup and made the long drive out to the property. We were sad to see them go, but Dad said we could go visit sometime.

We let them out in a pasture with some other critters, and we figured they’d be fine, but we were still sad.

A year or so later, I asked my father if we could go visit the goats.

Dad just looked at me and said, “Well, son, last winter was pretty hard, and there wasn’t much work, and sometimes families have to do what they need to do to survive.”

I knew what he meant, so we didn’t talk about it any further. Sometimes no explanation is necessary.

I still think about those goats waddling out of that barn and the bottle a chalky Haley’s MO and it always causes me to chuckle and evokes a real sense of gratitude for my upbringing.

I was looking at the map illuminated by a red-lensed Petzl headlamp. Red is for night operations to maintain light discipline and not give away your position too readily. My buddy and I were looking at the map we’d been trained to use, trying to find a predetermined point somewhere in the tall pines of the back 40 of Camp Mackall where I was in a Civil Affairs Qualification course a long time ago.

We were trying to find landmarks to ascertain our exact position so we could reach the objective. We figured out that we needed to head a certain direction. We determined our heading and started moving slowly and quietly through the woods. It’s one thing to know your heading. It’s another thing to stay on that heading. It requires doing what’s called an azimuth check or shooting an azimuth. Azimuth is just a compass direction expressed as a number instead of saying north, east, south, or west.

Constantly checking your azimuth is a skill and it’s critical for finding your way in the dark.

This morning I awoke in the dark. I get up before my wife most days. A few decades of military service and being raised by a father who prized being up early have ingrained this habit. It’s like clockwork, no matter when I go to bed.

This particular morning, a Sunday, I was also going to head out for a before-church bike ride with my long-time training partner affectionately known as Rambo. The night before I prep everything for the ride, because I know that in the morning it’ll take me a minute to get oriented and I don’t want to leave anything critical behind like a water bottle.

My structure is the same. Wake up, bathroom, be quiet so as not to wake my bride or the dog, head to the kitchen, make coffee, and then sit for reflection, prayer or some type of communion with God. It’s been like this for many years now. Some mornings in this time of reflection I get inspired, or sense joy, or receive comfort. Again, this is my habit. It provides direction for the day or the ride or whatever. I may read the Bible, or simply think of a verse that strikes me. I may read a book or a liturgical prayer or listen to one. This is the way.

Some mornings are different, however. Today it felt like I picked up the phone to make a call and there was no one on the other end. Silence, no inspiration, no real sense of joy. Simply nothing. I wasn’t alarmed by this as it has happened on many an occasion. The silence of God can be unnerving, however. I tried yielding myself. I tried reading. As I sat in silence, nothing.

It felt like I was misdirected. I’m not sure why but one can probably trace these incidents in a familiar phrase, the cares of the world. As a military Veteran, I’m probably too keenly aware of global events. The information age doesn’t help with this much.

I got on my bike, met Rambo. We spoke no words as we headed down the road other than a quick “Mornin’.” Off we went to uncrowded country roads, but I couldn’t shake the uneasiness of the start of my day. We pedaled on.

I think I first noticed that it was a glorious morning about 7 miles in as we traversed a flat section of country road between two large farms. The sun was now just peeking above the horizon. The recent extreme humidity had caused wispy fog to drift just above the earth’s surface and as the sun’s rays pierced it, the illumination of the early morning was really quite something to behold.

I remember looking to my right over the fields and thinking wow, that’s beautiful and then it happened.

My azimuth returned.

For what reason did it return?

It was the beauty of the created world that drew me back in. A wry smile broke over my face. My legs, a bit heavy from three straight days of intentional training, gained a bit of life. The speed picked up along with my spirit.

Then a few miles away through my earbuds I heard a song starting. It’s one of those songs that starts slow. I almost thought my batteries had died, but slowly the music rose to a most welcome and familiar tune. I heard U2 singing “Where the Streets Have No Name.”

My azimuth returned.

The song that speaks of sunlight on faces, and shelter from the poison rain.

The song speaks to me about a place that we all long for.

By the time we got home, 30 miles later, the fog had lifted from the earth and from my heart.

It was time for church.

The opening sentence and proclamation further drew me.

The celebrant says, “Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

Then together we say,

“And blessed be His kingdom, now and forever.”

My azimuth returned.

All through the service in community, through song, the reading of scripture, the message, the creed, the prayers, the confession, the offering of peace to one another, the eucharist.

All are like shooting a new azimuth.

This azimuth leads me, us, to the person of God. This morning it was creation, music and shared community that led me there.

A compass is an incredibly useful tool for finding your way in the wilderness or on water. The compass relies on one thing that makes it work so you don’t get lost. Magnetic north, the magnetic field of our planet, makes this possible. Find north and you can find your way just about anywhere.

Magnetic north is a standard that has no variation. This is crucial for finding one’s way.

Likewise, in life we require a standard without variation to navigate the world. Some might ask, “What is this standard?” Certainly we don’t arbitrarily decide what the standard is.

An azimuth reading in relation to a moving standard is catastrophic.

The unmoving standard, not only in my opinion but in my experience, is the unending, undisputed, unrelenting love that is found in the Creator expressed in the revelation of Jesus.

My prayer this morning, in the midst of my wandering, was simple, “God, show me a little something today.”

He did, in the early morning sun offering up the prospect of a new day, a day that has never been up to this point. A song of hope and Sunday rescued me from the news of yesterday. A community of flawed but hopeful followers spoke, sang and prayed truth.

The azimuth returned and I found the path again.

Dear reader, please don’t think for a minute that this is formulaic. It’s not. God is not a vending machine. He does not have a checklist for you to follow to enjoy his presence. He’s in charge of making himself known.

Tomorrow He might reveal himself in another song or maybe not. It might be in the smile of a child or an unexpected phone call from an old friend or a challenge to overcome.

Our job is simply to follow along, checking our azimuth on a regular basis. And when we forget to do so, and we will, the task then is simply to ask, “God, show me a little something today.”

I suspect you’ll find out He will.

I could see the bead of sweat dripping toward the end of my nose as I held hands with her. I was hot with nerves and it was a boiling August day, and all I could really focus on was that bead of sweat and the red carpet in front of the oak altar.

Bob, the priest, was leading us through our marriage ceremony. It was August 3rd, 1991, and at this writing exactly 35 years ago.

But all I could focus on was that bead of sweat. I dared not wipe it away, and it fell to the floor. I watched it soak into that carpet, then another, and another.

Before the service, my dad and I looked out the peephole from the changing room at the front of Trinity Episcopal Church. I saw every seat filled, and I remarked to Dad that there were a lot of folks at this thing. That’s when I got nervous, really nervous. My stomach felt like a bunch of bubbles and fruit flies had taken up residence.

I remember seeing Tammy come through the big double doors at the back of the church with her dad. She was stunning. She moved effortlessly down the aisle, smiling, her eyes locked on mine. Flanking either side were family and friends from all over to celebrate the beginning of a life together.

The Tudor-style church is encased in amazing stained glass, and in the afternoon it cast a rainbow of hues all throughout the great hall.

I suspect it was like a picture postcard.

After all the “I do’s” were done, we made our way out the back of the sanctuary, took a few pictures, and down the stairs we went into the inner courtyard. People lined the stairs and the entrance to the downstairs fellowship hall.

Tammy’s dad worked as a car hauler in NASCAR and was a bit of a legend in the pits, so there were race car drivers, crew members, and well-wishers from that community. The limo we left in was provided by another race car driver who had a side business.

Tammy’s high school friends, along with all the fellas I grew up with on Edgewood Road, were there.

And our families. Mine very small and Tammy’s very large. It was an eclectic bunch for sure.

In the midst of all that was my Aunt Becky, my mom’s only sibling. Aunt Becky was a delight. She was quick-witted and loved a good laugh. She mowed her giant yard with an old Snapper lawn mower. She made the best corn pudding too. And Aunt Becky dearly loved a good party. Over the years there were many a shindig at her house down the road from our place. Her birthday was in February, and as she aged she’d celebrate the whole month instead of one day. In May she always threw a party for my mom’s birthday called “The Strawberry Jam” with all of mom’s mountain music friends descending on her oak shaded back yard for food and song. They play late into the evening and Becky was the ring leader.

Becky, along with my folks, conspired to make our reception memorable, and that they did. I suppose most receptions are about the same. These days the young folks make them like an A-list event, with a DJ introducing the wedding party and everyone doing some kind of creative entrance until the revelation of the bride and groom. The crowd goes wild.

This was not the case. Tammy and I walked into the fellowship hall and were almost immediately seated in two foldout chairs in the middle of the room. Then I heard a holler and a fiddle, and it was loud.

Out of the crowd emerged two oddly dressed folks, a man and a woman. They were a cross between a cartoon hillbilly and a circus clown. The costumes were over the top, and one of them hollered in a thick mountain accent, “You’ve been Fiddle Skunked!” The whole place erupted in laughter and applause. To add to the effect, the gentleman had a fake beard that looked remarkably like a skunk hide. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t actually skunk hide, but not 100%.

I looked around wondering what the heck was going on. I saw my brother laughing hysterically and pointing along with the rest. The famous NASCAR drivers were there too equally amused.

The duo commenced singing and dancing around us with obviously original songs about being married, and they launched into a vaudeville-like routine.

If you’ve seen The Andy Griffith Show, think of Ernest T. Bass or the Darlings, but perhaps amped up on too much coffee or something more stout. It was bizarre and hilarious.

What Tammy remembers well from that day is me pulling her close and asking, “Are these people from your family?”

She, as shocked as I was by the whole scene, said sternly, “No, that is not my family,” or something along those lines.

Somewhere in the crowd was my Aunt Becky, laughing her head off, because all this was her idea. Whatever she paid this weird duo was evidently worth it. My beloved aunt had done something for us that cannot be replicated. She made a memory that has stood the test of time.

Aunt Becky lived out the rest of her life in that house with that big yard until Alzheimer’s reared its ugly head and stole her from us. She passed away a few years ago. In her last days she was delightfully confused and always smiling.

So here we are in 2026, 35 years later. From that day of Fiddle Skunks to this day, much has changed in this old world. Our kids are grown and married, and we expect our first grandchild in a few months. I spent a career in the Army, went to war, and came home. Tammy has been the glue and the duct tape of it all.

Our life of striving to get ahead has been replaced by a more thoughtful and, some might say, mundane experience together.

We like things simple now. To celebrate our 35th, we decided that instead of one big thing to do, we’d make a list of simple ideas to enjoy over the next month. On the list was trying a new restaurant out of town and going to an actual movie theater. We’ve not gone to a theater in years. So we did that on August 3rd, 2026, enjoying a meal together at a family-owned diner in an adjacent town, followed by watching Spider-Man in a renovated old theater across the street. It was simple and glorious, and we were together. Next up as time allows we’ll do some new hikes, perhaps read a book together and spend a night by a river. We shall see.

So, in honor of my Aunt Becky, who loved all things Fiddle Skunk and celebrated her birthday for a month, we are doing the same this year. Perhaps we’ll keep our list of things to do together going until we are reconciled completely in a restored world one of these days. I’m sure Aunt Becky will be there with a host of others ready to celebrate and even get “Fiddle Skunked” again.

Till next time.

I was wielding a chainsaw on a downed spruce tree alongside Payne Branch in Watauga County. It was somewhere around 1996 or 1997. As the years have added up, my recollection of exact dates eludes me.

A lot has changed in that little valley over the years.

One thing hasn’t.

The river.

I had built a fire to burn the limbs and was splitting up the trunk for firewood to heat our cabin for the cold winter nights.

I heard the friendly voice of our neighbor down the road. His name was Sam Tate. About this time Sam was close to 90 years old and spry as ever.

Sam spent his entire life in the valley there, born in 1908 in a world that is foreign to those born 100 years later. He lived his whole life beside the same river.

Appalachia in the early 1900s was a far different world than what most who visit there today experience. Life was about surviving. While the Industrial Revolution was bringing modern conveniences, indoor plumbing, electric lights, cars and such, there was little of this in the mountains of North Carolina.

Workdays started early and ended late with chores like cutting and splitting wood year-round because winters were hard, tending large gardens that supplied food for the year.

Wealth was measured by the amount of land and livestock a family owned. Smokehouses where meat was hung and cured were as common then as Dollar General stores are today.

Children grew up quickly. By 10 years old, every child had a list of chores that needed to be completed every day, with school squeezed in the middle.

A trip into the town of Boone was an all-day event though only a few miles away. In 1920 the census showed that Boone had a population of 374 people. Today it’s over 20,000, even when Appalachian State is not in session, which adds many thousands more.

Boone is named for Daniel Boone, who is said to have hunted and explored the area even though he did not establish a settlement there.

This is the world that Sam was born into. A harsh existence that was held together by one thing.

Community.

No one got through life alone. Neighbors were critical to survival throughout the year. The faith community was an integral part of that.

Sam was a lifelong member of Middle Fork Baptist Church, which sits close to the river that bears its name, the Middle Fork of the New River. It’s a spectacular stream filled with trout that meanders through the meadows and gorges between Blowing Rock and Boone.

I set down my chainsaw when Sam approached. He had walked from his place, a third of a mile downriver from ours. My grandfather had befriended Sam in the 1960s, and his family looked in on our home when we weren’t there. Granddaddy worked out a deal, and Sam mowed the grass and fixed odds and ends around the home when my family couldn’t.

As a boy my brother and I would walk to Sam’s house to see him and his wife, Velma. I was fascinated with all the old tools and doodads hanging in Sam’s shop. Tools from a bygone era for shaping wood and fixing broken machinery.

Sam and Velma had a grown son named Bahnson. He had gotten a bad fever or something when he was a baby that caused his bones to grow differently. One leg was about six inches longer than the other, and he had to wear a boot with a giant sole. It affected his whole body, including his mind and speech. He mumbled a lot and was hard to understand. Sam would sometimes translate for us.

We were kind of scared of him.

But he was harmless.

He couldn’t drive a car but rode a bicycle all through the little valley they called home.

On the way to Sam’s house there was a small barn that was probably built in the late 1800s. Really small, and in it they kept a giant boar hog. That was their food for the winter. I’m not sure I ever realized that each year it was a different pig.

Sam shook my hand and said, “I heard you got called to the ministry, Brad. Your granddaddy would be proud.”

My grandfather had already been gone for a decade. Sam missed his friend, and so did I.

I said, “Yes, sir. I’m going to seminary to learn more.”

Then I asked, “What about you, Sam? Tell me about your faith life.”

His face lit up, and he told me about the two best days of his life.

The day he got married.

And the day he got baptized.

Sam and Velma were married when they were very young. I believe Velma was about 15 or 16 when they said their vows there at Middle Fork Baptist Church. Sam was a good bit older than she was, which was common in those days.

He and Velma were married and baptized on successive days, if I remember correctly. I asked him where the baptism took place, and he pointed at the Middle Fork and said, “Right there in that river.”

He went on to tell me that it was January, and the preacher and the deacons had to bust up the ice creeping out from the bank so they could gain access to the deeper water.

I remarked that it must have been a bit chilly.

Sarcastically.

He looked me square in the eye and said it was the greatest feeling of his life.

I was up in Boone again this past week with my buddy Robbie. We were tearing out the kitchen floor that had rotted and inspecting under the house that flooded nearly two years ago when Hurricane Helene barreled through western North Carolina. It was productive time.

With no water or power restored to the house yet, and the inside of the house stripped to the studs, Robbie and I set up camp on the back porch. We love doing that. The work was dirty and hard, and we were both pretty rank after a couple of days without a bath.

I told Mr. Robbie that I was heading to the river for a bath.

I threw on some shorts and made a beeline for the bank.

I looked up, and here came Robbie, shirtless in shorts, to do the same. We waded out knee-deep into that cool water and washed all the dust and sweat and grime off. We were bathing in the same river where Sam had been baptized decades before. I washed out my beard that probably had critters in it.

Folks driving by must have wondered why these two big shirtless men were taking a bath in a river.

Robbie said, “I guess we look like a couple of mountain men.”

Perhaps.

And then I thought about my granddaddy’s friend Sam.

Sam had bathed in this river when they didn’t have indoor plumbing. He had gotten his drinking and cooking water out of it. He fished in it to put food on the table. And he got baptized in it to signify his entry into the Kingdom. The river remains.

It was a good thing to ponder.

In this current world with AI data centers, social media influencers, wars and rumors of wars, it’s a good thing to know that long after what we currently think is so important is long forgotten, that river will still be there doing what it has always done in the mountains of Appalachia.

The river remains.

Sam and his beloved bride, Velma, and their son Bahnson are buried together at the Tweetsie Railroad Cemetery. You can see it high on the side of a hill along Highway 321, overlooking the Middle Fork of the New River.

The river remains

His voice cracked a bit and his eyes welled with tears when this question was asked.

“Who is your special person?”

Quietly he said, “My special person is my mom.”

This past week my wife and I volunteered with Rainbow Kidz, a program of Hospice of Iredell County. Here’s their website description:

“Rainbow Kidz offers two grief camp sessions for children during the summer. Camp Rainbow provides fun recreational activities and structured therapeutic opportunities to encourage sharing, to learn healthy ways to cope with grief, and to support healing.”

Tammy and I raised our hands to serve with elementary school children.

Rainbow Kidz is led by my long-time friend Leigh Ann Darty, who may not be large in stature, but she’s probably the biggest person I know. She has been advocating for children in the midst of grief for over 20 years.

I played football with her little brother Phillip at Statesville High School. He was a year older than me, our quarterback, and someone we looked up to. He died of cancer when he was 17. It was devastating for the team, but even more for his family.

Leigh Ann credits this time of her life to her mission of helping children through grief. Back in those days there weren’t many specific programs to help the healing process.

Leigh Ann speaks of Phillip as her special person, and this term is ubiquitous throughout the camp week.

Camp days are filled with energy and fun, but also intentionality. Seventy elementary school kids showed up this week. All of them had lost someone. Some had lost their “Poppy” or “Mamaw.” Others had lost a brother or sister. Many had lost a mom or dad. Many of the deaths they experienced were sudden, and some were incredibly traumatic.

Tammy and I knew each kid had a story.

I’ve been around death a lot over my years in ministry and through my 20 years as a chaplain in the Army. I’ve had to tell children that their daddy wasn’t coming home from some violent place on the other side of the world.

But most of my interactions were at the point of impact at a notification or at a memorial or funeral.

This week was different for us. We spent hours playing with these kids, having snacks, and hearing their stories as best as they could tell them.

Each day the kids arrive at a drop-off line, and they are celebrated when they arrive. It’s like a red carpet event as the staff helps them out of their cars. Rounds of applause and cheers ring out from the volunteers. Smiles are everywhere. I started yelling, “Congratulations! You made it!”

As the children emerge from their cars, you can see the wide eyed anticipation and wonder. The energy is incredible.

The camp takes place at a local Boy Scout camp offered up by the church that sponsors the troop. It has everything needed to make the week awesome. A cabin, a pavilion, a wide open grass area, all surrounded by trees. During transition time the campers play basketball, kick soccer balls around, and investigate the property, all under the watchful eye of a large cadre of caring volunteers.

In the afternoons there are structured activities like fitness, equine therapy, drum circles, and yoga, just to name a few.

But in the mornings it is group time.

This is where the real work is done. The hard questions are asked. The emotions come out, but the healing takes place.

The leader of the group Tammy and I were assigned to is named Michelle. Her heart is as big as all outdoors. She knows nearly every kid already because Rainbow Kidz is not only a camp during the summer but also an ongoing program in every school in our county year-round.

She greets them with hugs and smiles. During group time she keeps things moving and structured. I wondered how this would play out.

Group time lasts about 45 minutes, and there is a curriculum.

Each day the kids introduce themselves. They tell their age and who their special person is. That’s from day one. They call it the elephant in the room, and they name it. The elephant is the official mascot of Rainbow Kidz.

So this is what you hear, as I opened with.

“My special person is my mom.”

Reality sets in when you hear them say it out loud. You hear pain, loss, and hurt in that simple sentence.

But the amazing thing is that none of this is done alone. Many kids, and many adults, when death rears its head, feel alone. No one is alone at Camp Rainbow.

After we went around the group and heard all those kids tell who their special person was, I looked over at my bride, who loves everything about children. She is, and always has been, a mother. She was crying, as I expected. It wouldn’t be the last time.

Every day the staff opens with the whole camp together using their tag line. Leigh Ann has a bullhorn and screams instructions, and in a roar of little voices you hear, “I am HERE for YOU!” Then they go on, pointing at each other while continuing with, “AND YOU, AND YOU, AND YOU!”

It’s loud, and it’s repeated every day, almost like a little creed so every kid knows they are not alone and so they know they are helping someone else not be alone.

Leigh Ann’s daughter came up with an idea last year to write encouraging messages on clothespins and give them out to the kids. They were encouraged to give them away to others, and the kids started calling it getting clipped.

This year one child decided to put a clip in my beard.

It caught on.

The next thing I knew I had seven or eight dangling from my rather lengthy facial hair. Every day when they’d arrive at camp the clipping continued. I think the last day I must have had 15 or 20 colorful clips with kid words on them hanging off my face.

They got heavy too!

It’s pretty magnificent.

Our group of 17 kids came up with a name for their team. We were assigned the color red to keep things organized. This precious little girl, 10 years old, said, “Since we’re red, and I have cardinal earrings in, we should be the Cardinals.”

The group agreed and gave themselves the name Red Courageous Cardinals.

Courage is a virtue that is honored at Camp Rainbow. Every time someone shows courage in sharing a story they get the Courage Chain around their neck. It’s a big, gaudy, shiny chain the size of a logging chain in the color of their group. It’s a visible reminder of the act of courage displayed.

Mr. T would be awfully proud.

The little girl with the cardinal earrings talked about her grandfather as she cried. She was so descriptive and open and honest.

A little boy next to her adorned her with the Courage Chain, sliding it over her head and around her neck.

It was a sight to behold.

Such love and caring for each other.

Every kid at the camp stands on common ground, ground permeated by loss, sadness, anger, and lots of why questions. It’s in that common ground, in the community of shared pain, that healing arises like shoots out of rich soil in springtime after a long, cold, gray winter.

The name Cardinals got me thinking.

Down here in the South, cardinals are said to be visits from our “special people.” Cardinals mate for life, from what I’ve been told, and they aren’t migratory. So if you see one around your house, it’s their home too.

If you’ve read some of my articles from this year you’ll know that I’ve taken up learning how to carve. One of the very first carvings I did was a cardinal.

So when that little girl with the cardinal earrings said our group should be the Cardinals, I knew what had to be done.

Every kid in our group needed one.

So that day I went home and got started. As I worked I thought about and prayed for each child as my old fingers tried to control the knife. I worked into the evening and then the next day. Each one takes some time, but I must say it was love that provided the energy.

The night before the last day of camp, Tammy and I set up an assembly line in our kitchen to paint them all. We listened to the radio while we did it, old school. As we worked together we talked about the kids, our kids, and other things in life.

It was a memorable evening, just the two of us.

The next day I gave each cardinal individually to each child in our group. I got a lot of thank-yous and astonished looks when they realized it had once been a tree, then a block of wood, and finally a little red cardinal sitting atop a stump.

The last one I gave away was to the little girl with the cardinal earrings because she arrived late.

When I handed it to her she looked up at me with a smile and said, “It’s a cardinal!”

I said to her, “It was you who gave me the idea! I made one for everybody.”

She grinned from ear to ear and hugged me tight.

It really was a moment I’ll never forget.

All this week at home I’ve been re-listening to a book called The Shack by William Paul Young. It’s a novel about a man, after experiencing a tragic loss, meets with God for the weekend. It made a bunch of religious people really mad when it came out 25 years ago when I first read it.

It didn’t make me mad.

It made me want to know God even more and for God to know me even more.

I suspect Mr. Young’s vision of God did not fall within the decorum of accepted good theology.

In that book there is a line that God says to the man. His name is Mac.

God says, “Mac, I’m especially fond of you!”

I thought about that line all week, but even more on that last day.

All the families came to pick up their kids on the last day. Those folks are hurting too. We met so many of them.

The mission of Rainbow Kidz has been a game changer, not just for these kids but for these families. And they are grateful,

Camp closed with a song written by a local musician just for Rainbow Kidz. All the children sang the chorus together. It went like this to a groovy tune:

I’m here for you
You’re here for me
Strong like elephants
Together we can be
Holding memories close
Love will carry through
With hope and courage in our hearts
I’m here for you

It was a hymn.

Oh, how I wish you could have heard it. In this world that many days is so awful, to hear those kids singing about simply community in a time of loss gave me hope.

I couldn’t help sensing that God was there saying,

“I am especially fond of all of you.”

Then I remembered something Eugene Peterson wrote in his paraphrase of the Bible called The Message. “Jesus looked at his disciples and said, “Don’t push these children away. Don’t ever get between them and me. These children are at the very center of life in the kingdom.”

Let that sit for a minute

If you’d like to support a truly life changing, life giving, love filled mission that invests in children across the spectrum who have experienced loss, please take a look at their mission here to find out more:

https://www.hoic.org/Rainbow-Kidz

And…Perhaps if we all said,

“I am here for you!”

This world might be a better place

Since September 27, 2024, my family has been slowly rebuilding a small cabin in the mountains of NC built by my grandfather in 1965, the year I was born. Over the last 60 years it was never rented out, but now parts of 4 generations of family and friends have spent time at a place my mom calls, “Where Waters Meet.” On that day Hurricane Helene ravaged ¼ of the state of NC with lives lost and homes destroyed by a 1000 year weather event. Our home stood through the flood, but just barely. Everything inside was lost. Memories floated down the river.

We were there less than 24 hours later, and the sheer anguish of the scope of destruction was almost too much, and I’ve spent my fair share of time in war-torn regions.

As I surveyed and assessed that day, an overwhelming dread washed over me, and it was simply this, “I’ll never be able to fix this.” It was gut wrenching.

But I learned a valuable phrase, simply improve your position by 1% every day and stack day after day after day, and you’ll see progress. It’s inevitable, even at just 1% a day.

So, at this writing it’s July of 2026. Nearly 2 years later all the days of 1% improvement have led us to a place of hope. Hope that this little house, nestled under willow trees alongside the Middle Fork of the New River, will once again be inhabited by the sounds of laughter, music, and stories that must be told. All in the cool of the evening in the Appalachian Mountains.

Over the last few weeks much work has been done. I have many to thank, too numerous to name, but my neighbors should be. They are brothers who live with their mom. They look after her and she keeps them in line. Many days I can hear her yelling in Spanish. What she is saying I’m not sure, but it’s obviously a good scolding. I watched them renovate the house they purchased and noticed the precision and care they put into the project. I also noticed the speed. I’ve watched them with their sons, good fathers, teaching them by showing them. They are from Puerto Rico and family is the central part of their life. They are fiercely loyal. Somehow over the years Tammy and I have been included in their circle.

Over the last month they’ve been gathering their tools, taking time away from their building business and making the trip up the mountain to help us in the recovery process. I ride with them in their big Ford F350. We tell stories on the ride and I hone up on my Spanish as I listen intently to their conversations.

The last trip has been about the siding on the Boone house. It’s 60 years old and since Helene brought 4’ of water into the house, the side of the structure where the water pummeled the home for 6 hours or so needed replacing.

The siding is 1x12 cedar lap and is not available like it was in the 60s, so I had to go with a lap siding for the replacement. But, as my dad and grandfather taught me, we are using the old material for different purposes. Using a table saw we ripped that material down into 1x3” boards that will be used for trim pieces inside the house later on.

I was looking at a small piece of scrap and thought that I could possibly make a spoon out of what was left over. So, I chucked a couple of pieces into the truck at cleanup.

Cedar is incredibly resilient wood. Bugs won’t eat it and it’ll last years and years on a home. It turns gray in the sun over the years. You may have seen an old barn somewhere that has that gray appearance and it just might be constructed of cedar.

I took the scrap down to my shop along with one of my wife’s wooden spoons from the kitchen. I traced out the shape onto the scrap material, cut it out on my band saw and began shaping it with my bench knife. I have different tools for different tasks. There’s a gouge and a hook knife for the bowl of the spoon. It’s a slow but satisfying process.

I watched the gray weathered cedar disappear to reveal the familiar reddish brown tint of that species. Once the handle and bowl are roughed in I detail for smoothness and then the sanding begins. There are carvers who never touch sandpaper because their knife skills are so precise that there is no need. I’m not that guy, at least not yet. So I sanded, a lot, and then I sanded some more.

Once complete, sanded smooth, I treat it with a beeswax and mineral oil compound that is safe for food.

I held it in my hand and had some thoughts.

60 years ago my grandfather touched this wood. He nailed it to the home he built. I wonder if he thought about how much his family would enjoy what he built. I bet he did.

That piece of wood endured a 1000 year storm. I suppose on most job sites it would have gone in a dumpster. But now, a storm-ravaged piece of wood had been repurposed into not only something useful but also beautiful to look at.

Sanded smooth, I walked across the street. I found my neighbors playing dominoes in their carport as they do after work many a day.

I sat the spoon down and said, “This is from the siding that we tore off the house.” They looked at it in disbelief and smiled. I suspect their mom will use it to whip up a delicious stew to feed the whole family.

People are like that cedar siding in many ways. Years of battering have turned life weathered and gray. Sometimes folks think they are only good for the dumpster. But when the right tools in the right hands are applied, something useful and something beautiful is revealed because it was already there the whole time.

I find that when I allow God to do his good work in me, the process is quite similar. Redemption is a process where storm-ravaged and weather-beaten lives are transformed by divine love and care. He cuts away the gray. He shapes them with intention. He sands people smooth. That process can be painful, but the result is a human that most saw as someone to be thrown out, God transforms into something beautiful and useful.

That piece of wood made the journey from the storm to the stew.

Near my woodworking bench I have created a bin called “Story Wood.” You may be asking, what in the world is that? It’s pretty simple. It’s pieces of wood that I shape into different things to give to people, but the wood itself has a story and may be meaningful to the person receiving whatever I have made. The wood is not purchased, it’s gathered.

I started this when I learned how to whittle mushrooms. At first I used basswood blocks that I purchased online. Not much of a story there. But one day I was carving a piece in my front yard and noticed our crepe myrtle tree over at the corner of the house. I walked over and looked at it and noticed the smoothness of the bark and the naturally flowing growth of that particular species.

So I got out my little saw and cut off a branch and started on a mushroom. It came out pretty good, so I made another one. I gave the first one to my son, who keeps it on the dashboard of his car. I think he likes it because I made it and it came from a little tree that grew bigger at the same time he was growing.

Story wood.

Then I got interested in cedar. I have one of those trees in my yard. So the same process took place. I’d saw off a branch and select some limbs that had a lot of purple heart, and I started again carving little mushrooms. Southern cedar is aromatic. Every cut released that unmistakable smell. The deep purple heartwood emerged from beneath the pale outer wood. It’s the same cedar people have used for generations to line closets and hope chests because everything stored inside smells like a cedar grove.

I bet I made 40 or 50 of them and started giving them away to folks, always ensuring that what I had made for them came from a tree in my yard.

More story wood.

My daughter’s birthday was coming up. She’s crafty as well. She’s a knitter and sometimes when she comes over we’ll sit under the oak in my front yard and I’ll whittle and she’ll knit.

All in the same yard that she grew up in, where I made her a rope swing and built her and her brother a tree house in the old maple out front. It’s not lost on me, the significance of all that, as we sit together.

I wanted to make her something for her birthday, so back to the cedar tree I went. I harvested a branch big enough to create something I thought she might like.

A spoon for her kitchen.

I’d never made a spoon before. So I got on YouTube and found some very helpful videos that got me started. By the way, you can learn about anything on YouTube. Another blessing of technology.

Some of the folks that I saw carving spoons online could whip them out in an hour. Since I have limited shop tools, I was going into this fairly blind. I had to get a round log from that tree squared off. I have a small band saw that my friend John gave me, but it doesn’t have enough juice to saw through a 4 inch green cedar branch. So I took some long wood screws and my impact drill and fastened it to a 4x6 in my yard that supports my pull-up bar. I then took my old drawknife and started shaping it down.

A drawknife is a hand tool. A flat blade with handles on each end that you draw toward you. I generally use it to make shavings to start a fire. But in this case it was perfect for shaping that rough cedar log into something useful.

My shop isn’t neat. There are cedar shavings all over the floor. Knives scattered across the bench. Paint brushes stuffed into an old coffee cup. In one corner sits what I call the “Hall of Shame,” unfinished carvings that taught me something before they ended up there.

My dad always told me it wasn’t just knowing how to do something but having the right tool.

That’s wisdom right there.

After I shaped it, I drew an outline of a spoon on the flat surface. Then I started the long work of removing excess material so that the shape of a spoon started to be revealed. I did all that work with a bench knife, one cut at a time.

For the bowl, I used a hook knife and a gouge. It’s a slow process that takes patience and being deliberate, all while trying to cut with the grain.

I said some of those professional carvers can whip out a spoon in an hour.

I’m no professional.

I worked on this thing for days.

All the while thinking that my grown-up little girl might cook up something good with this thing. I bet I put 20 hours into it. It wasn’t work.

It was joyful.

The final step was sanding, hours of sanding by hand to get it smooth as silk to the touch. I whittled a little mushroom at the end of the handle.

I left the knife marks intentionally. Signs of work. Imperfections, much like her old man.

Then I rubbed some beeswax and mineral oil into it over the course of a few days. It came out looking handmade and kind of weird. It’s unlike any spoon I’ve ever made, sort of a cross between a spoon and a ladle, and now I call it a “spadle.”

On her birthday she dug it out of the bag. Her mom had carefully wrapped it in tissue paper.

I watched her face.

Her hands immediately found the handle and her fingers traced the smooth bowl of the “spadle” before she looked up at me.

“Dad! You made this?!!?!!? For me!?!”

I affirmed the question and told her it came from the cedar tree in the yard.

Story wood.

She oohed and ahhed over it for some time and even took pictures of it.

I signed it with a wood burner with a small heart and “Love Dad, 2026.”

She now has a story, from story wood.

Years from now, I’ll be gone, only a memory and a few leftover pictures. Perhaps she’ll be whipping up dinner for her grandkids, serving with the “spadle” her daddy made for her in 2026.

Perhaps she’ll tell them about the rope swing. Or the tree house. Or sitting under the old oak while she knitted and I whittled.

Maybe she’ll smile as that spoon, made from the cedar tree in her yard, reminds her of an important truth.

There’s a story in the wood.

I’ve got another piece of story wood on my bench right now. It came from the old cedar siding on our family home in Boone after Hurricane Helene.

I’ll tell you about that one next time.

I heard a piercing yelp from behind me, and I turned to see my little dog Max hightailing it across our yard at breakneck speed. I sprinted as fast as my 60-year-old legs would carry me and saw my wife doing the same from the passenger side of my 20-year-old Ford pickup. I had no idea what was happening.

Then I found out as my left leg was struck by a searing pain above my knee, and then again on the back of my leg. Yellow jackets!

Tammy was running, Max was running, I was running. Our neighbors heard the commotion and came racing over. One of my neighbors grabbed a machete because he didn’t know what violence had become of us. I have wonderful neighbors, by the way.

One of the little monsters chased us indoors. Poor little Max got stung in the face and in the hindquarters, and I got at least three or four in my left leg. Tammy ran through a cloud of thousands of them and miraculously came through unscathed and unstung!

Yellow jacket stings are incredibly painful, and Max and I needed some first aid to get ahead of the swelling.

If you grew up in the South, you know about these awful beasts. My friend Ray Ray, who grew up in Pennsylvania, calls them ground bees. That’s because, unlike other stinging insects, they don’t build their homes in paper nests up high. They burrow into the ground where, if you are mowing grass or simply strolling through your yard, they come out of nowhere.

My buddy Brian at one that was sitting on top of his donut one time. Stung the inside of his mouth!

Some folks have life threatening reactions to theses stings, so it can be serious.

They are very territorial and highly aggressive too.

I was so scared of them as a child.

My grandfather, my brother, and I were tearing down an old chain-link fence behind my Aunt Becky’s storage building, and there was one post left to get out of the ground. Grandaddy said, “Braddy, go over there and wiggle that post so we can pull it up.”

The post was held fast by 80 lbs. of concrete. I started manipulating the post back and forth to loosen it up, and then I felt the sharp sting on my ankle and instinctively bolted across the yard as far out of harm’s way as I could go. The yellow jackets had made their nest around that post.

My grandfather hollered at me to get back over there and get back to work. I respectfully yelled back, “There’s yellow jackets under that thing!”

Granddaddy muttered something like, “Oh, them things won’t hurt you,” and got up from his foldout chair and headed over there. I warned him from afar.

My grandfather had been an athlete and a farmer throughout his life. But emphysema, induced by years of smoking, had severely curtailed his ability to do a multitude of daily tasks with speed.

He got over to the post and shook it one time. Suddenly my aging grandfather, a man who had trouble breathing, found some adrenaline and sprinted his 70-year-old self across that yard in a way that would have made Carl Lewis proud.

Out of breath, and I can still hear it in my head, he exclaimed, “Boy, them things do hurt. I think we’ll let them calm down a bit.” We went and grabbed a Coke from my aunt and waited.

Gas is the preferred treatment for getting rid of yellow jackets. A few ounces down the hole will generally take care of the nest. My grandfather added matches into the equation, as he loved fire anyhow.

I can’t tell you how many of these nests I’ve found accidentally over the years. They always seem to be right where I’m trying to get something done.

After our ordeal the other day, I was chatting with my neighbor and her husband about what had happened. We all came to the same conclusion, that yellow jackets are the worst.

I told them that when I get to the other side of life after I die, I have a series of questions for my Maker. Near the top of the list is, “Lord, what was the deal with yellow jackets?”

Perhaps He’ll smile at my juvenile interrogative.

The created order sometimes seems very disordered, particularly when you and your little best buddy are getting lit up by vicious stings.

Inquiring minds want to know, so I did a bit of reading on them.

Yellow jackets are protectors of gardens as they feed on bugs that can be detrimental to the plants.

They are scavengers and clean up food left behind at picnics and such.

They pollinate, not as well as honey bees, but they play an important role in the ecosystem.

They are protective, very protective, of their nests, as we all know. But when they are out doing their normal day to day, they are, in many ways, generally uninterested in humans. They don’t sting because they are mean. They just seem that way.

I’m sure that when I speak to the Lord about these bugs, He’ll tell me a million other reasons they are part of His grand architecture of creation. Perhaps He’ll tell me that He made them yellow just because He liked that color and thought they looked cool like that. Maybe He’ll say, “I made them protective because I’m protective of what I love.”

I’m sure that the conversation will be amazing and in depth and go on for days.

Maybe we’ll also talk about the sting of the yellow jacket. Every human on the planet understands the sting of some animal.

A yellow jacket can sting multiple times, in contrast to their cousins, honey bees, which can only sting once. But they both sting.

Stings are sudden and sharp. They come when you least expect them.

We use the term not just when an insect gets us, but also as a descriptive term when something suddenly happens out of the normal day to day.

The apostle Paul used the term to talk of death when he was writing to his friends in Corinth. He was talking of the resurrection as a counter to the “sting” of death. In fact, he says that the resurrection is the balm for the healing of the “sting.” He even speaks directly to death, asking the question, “O death, where is your sting?” in light of the good news of the resurrection of Jesus.

I think this will come up when Jesus and I finally get around to talking.

When my grandfather died, I remember standing over his casket with my brother, looking at his face. The sting of death was in full effect. I was 21 years old, and my theology was shallow and weak. We said nothing. We just stood there in the quiet confines of Bunch-Johnson Funeral Home. The pain we felt was sharp and deep. It stung.

Now, nearly 40 years removed from when we stood over that fine man’s casket, I understand more clearly what Paul was trying to communicate to his friends. The sting is gone because of hope.

It fleshes itself out in my mind. I see my grandfather sitting on a porch next to a river with a host of others, intently listening to Jesus tell stories, fielding questions with big belly laughter filling the air.

There will be no more death there, and I like to believe there will be a passive yellow jacket buzzing around the mix, stinging no one.

I laid $100 cash money down on the counter and Mr. Riddle put it in the cash register and wheeled out the coolest thing I’d ever seen.

It was a Schwinn Varsity. The Bicentennial edition. Red, white, and blue.

Mr. Riddle’s bike shop sat in an old red brick building on the west side of Statesville. To an 11-year-old boy in 1976, it may as well have been a palace. Its still there today.

It was 1976, the year of the Bicentennial. In those days, bicycles meant freedom. Freedom from your mom and dad. Freedom from your neighborhood. Freedom to see what was around the next bend.

The bike that you had to have was the Schwinn Varsity. At the time it was the only bike anyone wanted. We treated them like off-road bikes long before anyone knew what a mountain bike was.

If you were looking for your friends, you found the house with all the bicycles lying in the front yard.

My dad said I could get one if I worked for it. So I mowed grass for $1.25 a yard. My brother did too.

It took a long time to save up that money. With a little help from my parents, I finally crossed the finish line.

That bicycle changed my world.

I rode it up and down our street until my parents called me in for supper. My friends and I rode to neighborhoods all over town. We followed trails through the woods behind our house. We’d practice riding with no hands. We’d race to stops signs. Sometimes we’d ride to Baker’s Filling Station, buy a Mountain Dew and a pack of cheese crackers, then sit in the metal rocking chairs out front counting cars like we didn’t have a care in the world.

Looking back, I realize we weren’t simply riding bicycles.

We were learning what it felt like to belong.

That summer was blanketed by Bicentennial events all over the country. Many products jumped into the festivities by offering special editions of their products.

The Tall Ships, massive sailing vessels, sailed into New York Harbor. The Liberty Bell and the red, white, and blue Bicentennial logo were everywhere.

Rocky and The Bad News Bears were my favorite movies from that year. The Summer Olympics were held in Montreal.

One thing I remember well about that summer was the sense of unity I experienced as an 11-year-old growing from childhood into adolescence. I was proud to be an American. I suppose much of my identity as a citizen of this country was formed that summer. I’m also sure it was idealistic. I know now, looking back, that growing up in a fairly rural county in western North Carolina contributed to that feeling.

I know it wasn’t perfect. There was still systemic racism. Vietnam veterans were young and no one knew what to do to help them. Nationally, we were at the tail end of a presidency cut short by scandal and a public resignation. The economy was sputtering.

But the Bicentennial taught us something about belonging. And I am grateful for that.

Something has changed.

At this writing we are 250 years old as a nation.

Unfortunately, I do not have that same sense that I did as an 11-year-old. We feel like a divided people. Somewhere along the way, belonging became harder to find.

I don’t know exactly why. Maybe it’s the endless stream of information. I can watch live TV while riding my bike if I want to, although not a great idea. Some days it feels like a logging chain attached to my belt. While any human can connect with most any human on the planet, real human connection seems more elusive than ever. I do enjoy baby goat videos on the socials, however.

I do know this.

Human beings still yearn to belong.

I didn’t expect to find that feeling again.

But I did.

Not at a parade.

Not at a political rally.

At a soccer game.

I don’t even watch soccer. Ever. But this year’s World Cup hooked me. There’s truly something special about nearly every human being on the planet being represented in what they call “The Beautiful Game.”

The other night the U.S. was playing Bosnia-Herzegovina in the first knockout round. The loser was going home.

The U.S. is good this year. Really good.

Twenty-five minutes before the end of the match, protecting a 1-0 lead, our best player received a red card for a hard foul. That meant he was out of the game and we had to play the rest of the match with ten players instead of eleven.

Not good.

The crowd was partisan, of course, with the game being played in California. Holding a one-goal lead for that long was going to be a tall order.

What happened next was incredible.

I heard the commentator say, “To win this game these guys are gonna have to suffer.”

And suffer they did.

I’m not sure how far a soccer player runs in a match, but those guys ran countless miles.

Every possession was filled with tension. My heart rate was up. Tammy was drifting off to sleep. I’d yell and wake her up and she’d lurch forward off the couch hollering, “What happened?”

Then, with only minutes to go, the U.S. somehow scored again to make it 2-0. They held off one final attack and the referee blew the whistle.

The U.S. had won a game they probably shouldn’t have.

It was amazing.

But then something else happened.

The cameras stayed on the field. The players hugged each other, clapped, and waved their arms, urging the crowd to get louder. The stands were awash in red, white, and blue.

Then the stadium speakers started playing John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

It wasn’t a song that was topping the charts these days.

It wasn’t a patriotic anthem.

It was simply a song nearly everybody knew. A song with a message that resonates.

For the next three minutes no one in the broadcast booth said a word. The entire stadium sang together.

You know the song.

I bet when you read the title your mind filled in the melody all by itself.

Mine did too.

It speaks of coming home. Of finding the place where you belong.

Take me Home

To the Place

I Belong

The commentators were singing. I was singing. I bet living rooms and watering holes all over the country were singing along too.

I looked at Tammy and we just kind of rejoiced in the moment.

We belonged.

For a brief moment, nobody cared who anyone voted for, what color their skin was, where they were from, or what kind of car they drove.

All that mattered was belonging.

Man, what a moment.

Maybe that’s what we’re all looking for?

A place to belong.

You know it when you see it.

This belonging has not been lost. We still find it in our families, in old friends, in civic groups, and in churches and faith communities.

Jesus spoke often about belonging. He welcomed outsiders. He told stories about lost sheep returning to the flock, lost sons coming home, and people finding their place again. He spoke of a Kingdom where people belong, both now and in the life to come. He taught us to love God and love our neighbor because that’s where life is found.

And the good news, for me this day, is that I believe wholeheartedly this belonging is available now and someday will be fully realized.

For that I am grateful.

Until then I seek to belong, locally, nationally, and universally.

So, to celebrate the Fourth I did what I did 50 years ago.

I went for a bike ride with my friends.

It was hot and sweaty and hard.

But that’s where I belonged.

Did you know that a 3 Musketeers bar has incredible healing properties?

Not the famed story by French author Alexandre Dumas, but the mass-produced candy bar. You know the one, milk chocolate wrapped around fluffy nougat in that familiar silver wrapper found at just about every gas station. Quick question though. What is nougat anyway? I’m fairly certain I’ve never used that word in a sentence that didn’t involve a candy bar. But I digress.

No scientist has ever published a study proving the healing powers of a 3 Musketeers bar. But over the years I’ve become convinced it does heal something.

Over the years I’ve found myself sitting with young couples struggling in their relationships. Much of the time those struggles begin with a communication gap. Conflict widens the gap until communication breaks down altogether. After enough repetitions, conflict becomes a pattern. Patterns are hard to break. But hard doesn’t mean impossible.

Years ago I learned a technique in marriage enrichment training that has stayed with me ever since. In nearly every argument there comes a moment when one or both people are simply tired of fighting. They want to get back to normal. They send a signal that says, “I’m ready to stop.”

The problem is the other person often doesn’t recognize the signal, so the fight keeps going.

We called it a repair attempt. I’ve always called it raising the white flag. It’s simply a word or an action, agreed upon ahead of time, that says, “I messed up. I’d rather work this out than keep fighting.”

Whenever I taught it, I wasn’t teaching theory. I was teaching experience.

I’ve been married nearly 35 years. During those years Tammy and I have had our share of fireworks and “discussions.” I also have a bad habit. When I get angry I usually say something stupid first. Then I shut down like an old computer going into sleep mode. Part of that is because I’m afraid anything else I say will throw gas on the fire. Part of it is pride. In those moments, humility is usually the last thing I want to practice.

Which brings me to the 3 Musketeers bar.

It has been Tammy’s favorite candy ever since she was a little girl. She doesn’t keep them around the house, but when she wants something sweet, that’s her choice.

Years ago we got into a brew-ha-ha over something neither of us would remember today. I got mad, said something stupid, shut down, and didn’t know how to get us back. Then I remembered what I’d been teaching soldiers. I drove to the convenience store, bought a 3 Musketeers bar, came home, laid it on the kitchen counter, and walked away.

She found it.

She knew exactly what it meant.

We started talking again.

That little candy bar became our white flag.

Guess what? It worked. And for many years now, it has continued to work.

It worked again this week.

I had officiated a wedding last weekend. It was a small ceremony on a deck overlooking the North Carolina mountains. It was simple, meaningful, and Tammy was with me. As the officiant, one of my responsibilities is making sure the completed marriage license gets back to the county.

The following week we planned to drop it in the mail on our way to another appointment. We were already running a little late when we reached for the envelope.

It wasn’t there.

I was unhinged.

Tammy is the administrator in our family. She always knows where everything is. I’m rarely entrusted with important paperwork. This time neither of us could find it. We looked everywhere we had time to look, but eventually we had to leave.

The drive was miserable.

The groom was an active-duty soldier who had flown home from overseas just to get married. The witnesses lived in Arizona and South Carolina. All I could think about was making that phone call and explaining that I’d lost the one thing I was responsible for.

Then I opened my mouth.

Tammy opened hers.

What had started as a wonderful day quickly unraveled.

At our appointment there was a break. I apologized. She apologized. We agreed we’d look again when we got home.

When we got back, we tore the house apart. I pulled every trash bag out of the garbage can and sifted through last week’s leftovers in 90-degree North Carolina humidity. We searched every pile of paper we could find. I found some old coffee grounds too. Uggh.

Nothing.

Then I did what I often do. I catastrophized the whole thing out loud. I started assigning blame. Tammy defended herself vigorously.

It was awful. We said words we didn’t mean and words that should not have been said.

She finally told me to leave her alone.

So I did.

She was still outside in the driveway, wearing rubber gloves and digging through the garbage. She felt responsible too.

I walked back inside and saw my laptop sitting on the kitchen table. I picked it up.

There it was.

The marriage license had been underneath it the whole time.

I wish I could tell you finding it instantly made me humble.

It didn’t.

I walked outside, held it up without saying a word, almost as if to say, “Ha, I got you.”

Even writing those words makes me cringe.

That’s what anger does. It distorts your thinking. Even after you’ve found what you were looking for.

I told Tammy I was going to get gas. I really did need gas, but truthfully I also needed to get away for a few minutes.

While standing inside the convenience store I looked over.

There they were.

3 Musketeers bars. I knew what had to be done.

I grabbed one, paid for my gas, and headed home.

Tammy had already left for the post office to mail the marriage license. I checked Friend Finder to make sure she hadn’t left me for Colorado and a better life. Turns out she was headed to the post office.

I set the candy bar on the kitchen counter, like I’ve done many times before. Beside it I left a sticky note that simply said, “I’m sorry,” with a little hand-drawn heart.

Then I went downstairs and started carving.

A few minutes later I heard her little feet coming down the stairs.

She had found it.

She knew exactly what it meant.

We both said, “I’m sorry.”

We both said, “I love you.”

Later we shared the candy bar.

It was sweet.

Life got back to normal.

No scorekeeping.

No “I told you so.”

Nothing left unresolved.

Imagine stacking dozens of arguments like that over the years without anyone raising the white flag.

I suspect that’s where many relationships begin coming apart.

The 3 Musketeers treatment isn’t about the candy bar. It’s about deciding the relationship matters more than winning the argument.

Somebody has to make the first move.

Somebody has to raise the white flag.

For us, it just happens to come wrapped in silver.

P.S. If the Mars Candy Company ever needs someone to speak on behalf of the healing properties of a 3 Musketeers bars, I know a guy.

More Than a Name

I’ve listened to a song by Everclear called “Father of Mine” for years. It’s a sad tale about an absent father and a son trying to make sense of it all. There’s a line in the chorus that has always stayed with me:

“Daddy gave me a name.”

Every time I hear that line, I think about my own father.

Then I can almost hear the footsteps.

Size 11.5 work boots coming down the hallway, creaking the oak flooring with each stride. Long strides. Purposeful strides.

The door to my room flies open and with a booming voice I hear, “Good gosh almighty, what are you gonna do, sleep your whole life away!”

(It was 0700 on a Saturday morning.)

The diatribe continued.

“I want you out of that rack!”

“I want this area policed!”

“I’m going to the dump and I’ll be back in 15 minutes and we’re going to work in the garden!”

That was the man who gave me my name.

My dad gave me way more than a name.

My father, Jack Sr., was a Navy man and to say routines were important to him is an understatement.

He would rise every day before the sun came up. Many days I could hear him doing pushups on the floor of his bedroom. He’d then head to the kitchen, flip on the AM radio to check the news. The man has eaten a bowl of oatmeal every single morning since he got out of the Navy in the early 1960s.

He had a tenacious work ethic and was bound and determined to pass that on to his two boys, and that he did. My brother and I, while not juvenile delinquents, were a handful. From crawling under the pews at church, during church mind you, to generally causing mayhem around the neighborhood, blowing up firecrackers and running wild, he was tested.

We worked with Dad a lot, mowing grass, raking leaves, working in the very large garden that we had up the road. He bought a brand new International 140 Farmall tractor for more efficient garden work. In the winter, if it snowed, we’d get to change out the plow or bush hog and put the blade on the tractor and plow driveways for our home and our neighbors.

Dad was a builder of homes and a remodeler. He built a set of apartments in town that he managed for years after that. At Christmas, we’d deliver presents to all the tenants and he’d let my brother and me do that. We also got to mow the grass, rake the leaves, and clean out the gutters. There was something cool about the view of the world from a roof.

Dad coached our ball teams and would play pickup basketball games with us. If I was shooting baskets when he got home from work, jeans, boots and all, he’d most of the time stop for a game of horse before going in to his office to finish up the paperwork from the day.

He loved to watch sports on TV with us and Monday Night Football was a weekly ritual. Our bedtime was 9:30 on school nights, but he’d let us stay a hair past that so we could finish the first half and watch the Sunday highlights with the immortal Howard Cosell. We watched Happy Days together as well and when he would get mad at us he’d call us “Bucko,” like Richie Cunningham used to say on that show.

But he didn’t want us living in front of a TV. In fact, if we were loitering in front of it eating bowls of cereal, like we did, he did not appreciate that. He would come in the house and catch us watching TV when we should be doing chores or, in his words, “Why don’t you read a book!”

Dad didn’t just tell us to read. He fed our curiosity.

He taught me how to find arrowheads after a freshly disked field had been washed by a rain. He bought me books about Native Americans and I read every one of them.

One summer, Dad and I sat snapping beans from the garden while watching The Green Berets on a black-and-white television. I was fascinated by that movie.

At one point he looked over at me and said, “Maybe someday you can do something like that.”

I never forgot it.

Years later, when I walked through the doors of 3rd Special Forces Group Headquarters for the first time, that moment came rushing back to me.

Maybe someday had come.

I worked for him on the job site when he built houses. My first day on the job I had worked about three hours cleaning up the job site, picking up scrap lumber and bricks and putting that in the bed of the pickup to go to the dump. I guess I got hot and tired and went in the garage and sat down on the block wall in the shade. Dad came around the corner and busted me loafing. He was mad, but didn’t yell at me. He just said, “This is a job site and those men work all day long and they sit down at lunch and when they get home. I don’t ever want to see you sitting on a job site again. Find something to do or ask.” I’m pretty sure I didn’t sit down on the job again, at least not when he was around.

Once at the end of a workday, he got out of his truck with a check from a customer in his hand. One of our goats, yep goats, snuck up behind him and snatched the check out of his hand and ate it. It must have been an odd conversation with that customer.

My dad gave me more than a name. He gave me opportunities.

My dad hated racism. Being from Illinois, I never once heard him say anything remotely disparaging about anyone because of the color of their skin. Once we were out in the country and there was a little store. It was summer and it was hot. His old Chevy pickup didn’t have air conditioning, just those triangle windows that you tilt inward to grab more air. I was thirsty and asked him if we could pull in that store. He flatly answered, “Those people will not get my business.” I asked him why and he pointed to a sign over the door and it read “For White Trade Only.”

Now this was the 70s and the Civil Rights Act had already been passed. That kind of thing was certainly illegal in our country, but those folks had left that sign up from days gone by, I suppose out of some sick nostalgia.

One Thanksgiving, Dad volunteered to spend the night at 5th Street Ministries and took me with him. I was probably eight years old. We slept in the men’s section of the shelter.

To be honest, I was scared.

The place was unfamiliar and I didn’t know what to expect.

Dad slept in the bunk next to me.

I don’t remember much else about that night, but I remember knowing I’d be okay.

My dad gave me more than a name. He gave me an example.

My dad taught me how to build Revell models of aircraft, tanks and cars. He showed me and my brother how to use glue properly and how to paint. He was and still is a master hobbyist. He had a deep love of trains. He worked for the railroads in the Midwest and never lost the romance of traveling by train. He became a model railroader, building elaborate layouts, constructing the frame, laying the tracks, building the tiny buildings, and wiring the electronics.

The train room in our house was a museum and an exhibit that we showed off to our friends, even though we weren’t allowed to play with the trains unless he was there. And for good reason. They were fragile and little boys were, well let’s say, rough and tumble.

He often got migraine headaches that were so bad that he’d be in bed for a day. We would need to be quiet because noise from little boys made his pain much worse. I knew he had one because I would smell Vicks VapoRub throughout the back of our house. He used that to help with the pain. I would often feel bad that we couldn’t shoot baskets because of those headaches.

My dad is now 88 years old and we talk via phone most every day. He lives four hours from me but we’ve remained connected. My dad made mistakes just like we all have because no one is perfect. There were times when our relationship was strained, and I suppose that’s just the way life goes.

But with some love and forgiveness, the important things remain.

I think some boys grow up trying to get the approval of their dad. I didn’t have to do that.

When I joined the Army I came to a new understanding of my father. I became a commissioned officer, as was he. I joined the Army, he was a Navy man. At my commissioning service he pinned my bars on my collar and said jokingly, “You should have joined the Navy.”

I grinned as he did that. Then he said he was proud of me. There were many days in uniform that I not only thought about the things that I learned from my father, but when I was listening to a young soldier trying to navigate life, my responses and counsel were often rooted in much of what I learned from my dad.

When I deployed to Iraq, my brother and I hatched a plan to surprise Dad with a trip to Alaska around Father’s Day. We started planning in January for a June trip to the Kenai Peninsula. My son Jack, who was 11 or 12 at the time, joined us. We spent a week at the confluence of the Kenai and Russian Rivers. We went salmon fishing and caught our dinner. We hiked up to an old gold mine near a place called Crow Pass. We spent time sitting over the aqua-green, glacial-fed Kenai River, ate too much and made some memories. We met folks from all over the world who came to marvel at the same things we marveled at. It’s a week that lives very fondly in my mind.

My dad gave me more than a name. He gave me memories.

As a father and soon-to-be grandfather, the way I approach life was formed in those years under his guidance. When you’re a kid, time is so much different. The 17 years spent living with my dad felt like 10 lifetimes. Seventeen years ago, I was leaving for Iraq. And that feels like yesterday.

The words my dad said to me often come out of my mouth. I’m quite certain I’ve told both my kids, “Go read a book!” Fortunately they did.

I’ve listened to that song for years. Every time I hear the line, “Daddy gave me a name,” I feel a little sad for the man who wrote it. Not because his story isn’t true, but because it was so different from mine.

My dad gave me a name.

He also gave me opportunities, examples, memories, and a thousand small investments that shaped the man I became. Many of those gifts I didn’t fully appreciate until I was older.

I’ve shared all this because at the time of this writing it’s Father’s Day. To be honest, this piece is for me, my brother, and my dad, but I’m glad to share it with you.

Yes, my dad gave me way more than a name. I hope someday my kids will be able to say that about me.

Happy Father’s Day Dad

It was 2:00 in the morning and I was hot and in a hole. A literal hole.

It was August of 2004 in the backwoods training areas of Fort Jackson, South Carolina. I was in the final week or so of my Chaplain Officer Basic Course. My journey as a 38-year-old newcomer started with the 9/11 attacks and then a long process of paperwork and doctor’s visits to ensure I met standards. I did.

And here I was staring down the unknown, facing leaving the training environment knowing, just like my classmates, that we’d all at some point be going to a war zone either in Iraq or Afghanistan. Those were weird days.

In my hole it was hot. The hole I was in I had dug with some of my teammates, commonly called a foxhole or a fighting position. We were on what is called a field exercise that was a culmination of all we had learned over the past three months, having the opportunity to put it into practice before joining our assignments.

Shifts to man the holes had been assigned and I got the 2:00 in the morning shift. If I remember correctly it was for a couple of hours and then a few hours of shut-eye before the next day’s training events. Our job in the hole was to look for the enemy who was played by some of the staff at the school house. They were armed with blanks and artillery simulators and smoke.

We had been introduced to the artillery simulator as soon as we arrived at the training area after a long ruck march. One of the instructors threw one in the woods, it went off and we all hit the deck. The instructor then walked around and pointed at people and said, “You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re injured,” and phrases like that in a very gruff and loud voice. It was their way of letting us know bad things can happen any old time.

So there I sat in my hole, missing my wife and my little children. I was calculating the decision that I had made. The news from the two wars going on was filtering in every day. None of that was a training exercise.

In my hole I began to wonder if I was even cut out for this role as a spiritual leader of soldiers. Chaplains are in the middle of every crisis that any unit faces. Even in peacetime those events occur, but in an asymmetric war, they simply increase. And that’s where we were.

My hole was dank and hot.

I had dug that hole.

It was dark in my hole too. I was sweaty with green and black camo paint on my face. My feet were miserable from being in ill fitting black leather boots that we had to spit shine every day. There were no flashlights in the hole to observe light discipline. Only me, the dark, the sound of cicadas and crickets, the sand in my uniform making the hotness of the hole even less pleasant. My mind was filled with the darkness of an unknown future. I prayed asking God for the wisdom and courage to follow through. To be honest now 22 years later, I’m glad I didn’t know what was coming. But I’m also glad I did it.

I just sat there staring into the wood line from my hole.

Then I heard footsteps, but from behind me. At first I wondered if the bad guys had snuck by me. One of my teammates had been captured earlier by the notional enemy and they blindfolded him, tied him to a tree and put chem lights on him so that we could find him in the dark woods. He was fine by the way and went on to become a good officer.

No, these footsteps were not the enemy.

I heard someone whisper, “Chaplain Borders, are you okay?”

I looked up from my hole and it was our course manager, a major and a man I not only looked up to out of my hole, but a leader I was proud to serve with and learn from.

I said, “Yes sir, no sign of the enemy.”

He then did something that I’ve never forgotten.

He climbed down into the hole with me.

Immediately I wondered what he was doing. He certainly didn’t have to be out of his rack at 0200 in the sweltering summer heat and humidity of Fort Jackson. Some nights it never got below 85 degrees.

But he was there at 0200.

He could have gone home to his wife. But he didn’t.

He could have gotten some shut-eye. But he didn’t.

He came out and got in my hole with me.

I had not had the opportunity to visit with many of the instructors one on one. I sat under their teaching for sure, but there was very little get-to-know-you time. There were 120 of us in that class.

But there we were, in my hole.

He asked me what I had thought about the training. He asked me about things I had learned. He asked me about my calling story and why I was there. He asked me about my wife and children and where I was from.

He also told me that he’d been observing me throughout the last three months.

I answered as respectfully as I could.

What he didn’t know is that he had just done something that I’ve never forgotten.

He had no idea that while I was in that hole, I was in another hole. A hole of my own making just like that fighting position. I was losing confidence in myself.

And he got in the hole with me.

And not just for a few minutes. It was a while.

We looked up at the stars.

He listened to me.

I listened to him.

Yes, I was in school, but this was an entirely different kind of classroom.

He used my first name. I did not use his.

I don’t remember his exact words. Twenty-two years has a way of wearing down those details.

But I remember the effect.

He told me that he thought I was going to be good at what I had been called to do.

At that moment, that’s exactly what I needed to hear.

He did what great leaders do. He got down in the hole with one of his soldiers.

He had no idea I was carrying that self-doubt, at least I don’t think he did and he never let on that he knew anything.

He gave me time and proximity, and it cost him sleep and comfort.

He knew it was important and I imagine this wasn’t the first time he’d done this.

Since then I’ve been in other holes of my own digging. Maybe you have too.

I’ve also learned to get down in the hole with others.

The holes we dig are sometimes

Dark

Dank

Lonely

Dirty

Isolated

Uncomfortable

Dangerous

And I think sometimes the worst part is the loneliness.

As I’ve thought about that night over the years, I’ve often been reminded of Psalm 40:

“He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog.” I’ve always liked U2’s version of that Psalm.

God doesn’t shout instructions from afar, He’s demonstrated that he walks with us in the muck, sits with us, and leads us out of dank places. Because God knows the hole’s we dig for ourselves because He abides with us in them.

Maybe that’s why that night has stayed with me all these years.

I don’t remember every detail of our conversation.

I don’t remember every class I took that summer.

I don’t remember every field exercise.

But I remember a leader climbing down into a hole and sitting beside me.

I remember him listening.

I remember him encouraging me.

I remember him helping me see something in myself that I couldn’t see at the time.

Most of all, I remember that I wasn’t alone.

Over the years I’ve come to believe that one of the holiest things we can do is get down in the hole with someone else.

Not to fix them.

Not to lecture them.

Not to tell them what they should do.

Just to be there.

To listen.

To remind them they aren’t alone.

That interchange also sparked in me a reminder that that wasn’t the first time someone climbed into a hole with me. I remember a camp counselor in Tennessee, a football coach on a sideline, a hunting buddy and probably the most consistent and enduring presence in human form has been my wife who knows very well the holes I dig.

Do you know someone who’s in a hole?

There are ways to get into the that hole with them. It might cost you. But it might be the greatest gift you can give.

Are you in a hole?

Allow someone to climb down in there with you, they might just know the way out.

We have a guest author today in the Edgewood Dispatch.

Last week Tammy and I were going through some boxes of things that needed to be organized that belong to my mom. It was a treasure trove of pictures, letters, toys and memories.

In one box we found a folder that contained a photocopied article from the Statesville Record and Landmark from probably early March of 1987. It was just a few weeks after my grandfather, Maury Gaston, died and left a hole the size of Montana in us. He died on Valentine’s Day. The column in our paper was called Down in Iredell (Our County here in NC)

It was penned by my great Uncle Henry who I’ve written about in other articles and between he and my grandfather are the headwaters of my love of storytelling.

His piece is one that tries to answer a question my younger cousin Graham had when our grandfather passed away. His question was “How can you be good like Grandaddy?” I’ll let his article do the talking, its gold.

DOWN IN IREDELL

WORTH REPEATING

We just received a note from Henry Gaston who writes a column for The Gastonia Gazette. Last Sunday Henry did an article about his brother, the late Maury Gaston. We know you will appreciate Henry’s unique style of writing so we are pleased to reprint his column from Feb. 28:

Judy and I went to the graveside of one of our family. We called him “Boukie.” Others knew him as Maury Gaston. My Sunday “offering” is not to add to his memorial service, but more to ask for help in answering a question that was asked of the ministers by his grandson, Graham:

“How can you get to be good like granddaddy?”

How would you answer such a heavy question?

Boukie was the “work horse” among the Gaston brothers as I came up on the cotton farm. He was the only one of us who was stout enough to manage the two horse cultivator. On very hot days, he’d come to the supper table with his shirt covered with dried salt, having wrestled with that “man killer” all day. It made hoeing out grass much easier.

When wintertime came, he carried a multi-load at the sawmill, too. Huge white oak trees fell like saplings, and logs piled quickly when Pop Gaston sent Walter with Maury to cut timber. They always said, “A crosscut saw will either kill you, or make a man out of you.” It made a man out of him: broad chested and stout as a mule, assuring him a place on the Belmont High football team. They gave him the nickname “Flying Cloud.”

Boukie was bent on making a place in the world. He finished at N.C. State and came home to Gaston County to help farmers.

One day, he was visiting a farmer who had just finished castrating a boar pig. The operation had not been successful. The incision had freed an intestine.

Boukie, fresh out of college, should know what to do, so he volunteered, as the farmer asked, “How successful are you at this?”

“One hundred percent!” he said, as he lit in with the needle and thread, never having done it before. No one was more happily surprised than he to find the old boar doing just fine and healthy.

On another occasion, Boukie and Press Anthony, a dairyman he liked, went on a trip to Wisconsin to buy 25 Holstein cows. It was the dead of winter. They rode up there on the bus and came back with the cows in a railroad boxcar. The cows had to be milked, fed and watered along the way home. Fighting the bitter cold, they slept on makeshift beds atop four water barrels, their only mishap coming one night when the train lurched, sending them among trampling hooves below. Boukie’s recollection focused not on the fall, but on the warmth of the floor when he “came to.”

Graham, I’m still trying to help answer your question. I found a baby picture that shows part of the answer. He looks as if he wanted to be a good granddaddy, even then.

You see, he liked helping farmers because it took him back to the good earth. He cared for all animals, never being without a dog. Old Joe, his last one, can tell you that. Being like your granddaddy doesn’t mean you’ll have to work behind a man killer plow, use a crosscut saw, save a ruptured pig, or go to Wisconsin. You don’t “set out” to do it as much as you let it become a result of following your heart’s conscience.

Lightening somebody else’s load seemed to be what his heart wanted most. He reminds me of the songwriter who saw a lad carrying a crippled boy on his shoulders, and asked him,

“Shouldn’t you stop and rest a while; you’ll break your back with such a load!”

The lad’s answer gave the writer a song:

He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.

The ministers at the service seemed to say it well for me: he went around with no conscious effort of being good, but was, because his love came from One who loved us all, and set the example.

What would you add? How sure can we be that the same might be asked of us?

For sure, “Flying Cloud” will always come to mind when I look up into the fleecy sky and try to name the sculptures that are there. - Henry Gaston

A note from Brad

Its a great question that my cousin asked and I really like Uncle Henry’s response. He answered with a story, not a step by step approach to goodness. No list to follow. I could tell you many a story that illustrated the goodness of my grandfather, but you get the picture.

When you meet someone who’s “good” it kind of just leaks out of them doesn’t it?

May we all leak a little good on the world around us and thank you for reading.

If you know or knew someone that leaked goodness, I’d love to hear that story so leave a comment!

Till next time

It was culture shock.

My future wife and I had been dating for almost a year, and I had already been invited to a number of family functions. It was culture shock for me because my family was small, very small. With only a handful of relatives in town and most of them at least an hour away, big family gatherings were more rare than commonplace.

This was not the case for my future bride.

Her family goes back to the Revolutionary War in these parts. She’s related to everyone. We find out all the time about family connections through friends as conversations reveal aunts, uncles, and cousins we never knew existed.

My little tribe of people got together a lot, but it was never more than six or eight folks. Tammy’s family, on the other hand, had a tradition of gathering for every special occasion and going on mass vacations together.

On our first Christmas together as a couple, I was invited to her mother’s side of the family’s celebration at Mamaw Prue and Papaw Babe’s house on the west side of town.

Mamaw and Papaw lived in an old mill house not far from the cotton mills where they had both worked for many years. The mills built small houses for their employees because many of the workers came from farms outside town and needed a place to live. Mamaw and Papaw raised a family in that tiny little house.

They had a small porch with an old metal porch swing hanging at one end where countless conversations took place and many a watermelon was enjoyed. The paint was worn, and the swing squeaked with a steady rhythm every time it moved. More often than not, if you stopped by looking for Papaw, that’s where you’d find him.

The house was tiny. Two small bedrooms, a modest living room, one bathroom, and a small kitchen.

I was still getting acquainted with this new family when the big Christmas gathering arrived. As the new boyfriend, I was a tad nervous.

When we got there, cars lined the street. I thought there must be some other family event going on.

There wasn’t.

As we walked up, I could hear laughter and stories spilling out of that little mill house.

When the front door opened, or partially opened because there were so many people packed inside, you could barely squeeze through. I was completely out of my element.

The first thing I noticed was the smell.

Not one thing in particular.

Just goodness.

The smell of food cooking, desserts cooling on countertops, and a house full of people who genuinely wanted to be together.

Even though it was late December and chilly outside, it was hot inside. All those brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and relatives had turned that little house into a steam bath with no escape. It seemed like forty people were packed in there.

I was sweating.

There was food everywhere. Folks were throwing down on every kind of home-cooked dish imaginable. Mamaw was tending to the main dishes in the kitchen, and it was even hotter in there.

Mamaw Prue was a tiny woman with a warm smile. Every time she saw me, she’d take my hand and kiss me on the cheek as if I’d been part of the family all along.

There wasn’t any arguing.

No family drama.

Just laughter.

The kind that comes from people who have been telling the same stories for decades and still find them funny.

The blessing was said, and the line snaked through the house. With paper plates in hand, everyone filed from the parlor into the kitchen. Then it became every man for himself when it came to finding a place to eat.

The only dining table seated four.

Tammy and I ended up sitting on the floor.

I sat there listening to stories while Papaw Babe held court from his recliner.

If you look up the word Papaw in the dictionary, there ought to be a picture of him beside it.

His hands looked like they were made of leather after years of mill work and hard living. Many times he didn’t bother with his dentures. But his laugh was infectious. When he laughed, everybody else laughed too.

After dinner and copious amounts of dessert, the gift giving started.

The only gift I remember from thirty-seven years ago was a giant tub of peanut butter given to Papaw.

This thing was huge.

He already had a spoon ready and dug right in.

I learned that Papaw got peanut butter every Christmas because when he was growing up during the Depression, his mother would spread peanut butter on a saltine cracker and then scrape off any excess so it could go back in the jar. Nothing was wasted.

Papaw said that if he was ever not poor again, he was going to get himself a whole tub of peanut butter.

Thus the yearly Christmas gift.

Funny thing is, by most measures of American success, Mamaw and Papaw were poor their entire lives.

But as I sat there sweating on that floor, in love with this pretty girl from this very big and very odd family, I realized they weren’t poor at all.

They were rich in the things that matter.

And they still are.

I know that now after being married to Tammy for nearly thirty-five years.

Mamaw Prue and Papaw Babe have long since gone on to the next life, along with many others, waiting for the restoration of all things, just on the other side of the curtain.

Just last evening there was another one of those gatherings, this time for another Papaw, Tammy’s dad, affectionately known as Bandit. That’s another story.

The whole family descended on our house, and I cooked hamburgers and hot dogs because those are Papaw’s favorites. He likes his hot dogs very charred, and I cook to order.

Just like those early family gatherings, it was hot in the kitchen.

My wife, like her grandmother before her, had worked all day getting everything just right.

And it was.

We finished the evening by shooting fireworks, and Papaw thought that was pretty cool.

Later, we gathered beneath the old oak tree in the front yard. Lawn chairs formed a loose circle as the conversation drifted from one story to another. We laughed, talked, and watched my great-niece play ball in the fading light while Max rooted around the yard looking for whatever interesting thing a dog might find.

It wasn’t fancy.

Just family.

These family gatherings happen almost every month to celebrate something or someone.

It’s simply the way things are.

And the way they should be.

Yesterday, during the gathering, my sister-in-law showed up with a biplane rocking horse she had found at a yard sale.

She paid three dollars for it!

My wife and her sister have always had a knack for finding bargains. They learned that honestly.

The rocking horse wasn’t for my great-niece, though she certainly enjoyed it.

It was for us.

For the grandbaby who hasn’t arrived yet.

As I watched my great-niece, who’ll be 4 this year, rocking back and forth on that little airplane, spinning the propeller and making airplane noises, I couldn’t help but smile.

One day soon, our grandchild will be sitting there doing the same thing.

And that’s when it hit me.

The old mill house is gone.

Mamaw Prue and Papaw Babe are gone too.

But the things they taught their family are still here.

Hospitality.

Generosity.

Thrift.

Showing up for one another.

Making room for one more person at the table, even when there isn’t room.

Those things are still being passed down.

Not through lectures.

Through crowded kitchens.

Through family gatherings.

Through giant tubs of peanut butter.

Through an old porch swing.

Through a three-dollar rocking horse bought for a child who hasn’t even been born yet.

In a world desperate for something it cannot quite name, perhaps the community found in a tiny mill house on the west side of Statesville still has something to teach us about what lasts.

I reckon the story continues.

The following is the text of a speech I gave on Memorial Day 2026 in Cornelius, NC

A few years ago, while serving as the chaplain for the 3rd Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, I was helping prepare for our Memorial Day stone laying ceremony.

Outside the group headquarters is a memorial walkway. Along that path are stones bearing the names of Green Berets who lost their lives during the Global War on Terror. Each stone is identical. A name. A date. A Special Forces crest. And the place where that soldier died, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other distant places most Americans will never see.

When I first arrived at 3rd Group, there were 27 stones on that walkway.

When I left some 7 years later, there were more than 50.

That particular year, many Gold Star families attended the ceremony. Mothers. Fathers. Wives. Children. Understandably, our commander wanted everything done well. The ceremony mattered because the people mattered.

As we were finishing preparations, our group commander looked at me and said, “Brad, do you have a minute? Can you come into my office?”

We stepped inside, away from the crowd and noise gathering outside.

He was an imposing man. About six foot six. Large hands. A combat veteran who had spent years carrying the burden of war and leadership. His office looked much like you would expect from a man who had devoted his life to service. Framed flags and awards hung on the walls. There were photographs of teammates from deployments downrange. The fluorescent lights overhead gave the room that familiar government building feel that anyone who has served probably remembers well.

Then he asked me something I never forgot.

“Can I read my remarks to you?”

I told him, “Of course, sir.”

Then he said something that has stayed with me ever since.

“If I cry reading it here, I won’t cry out there.”

There was no embarrassment in his voice. Just honesty.

He began reading his remarks aloud, and as he did, tears came to his eyes.

Not because he lacked strength.

But because he understood the weight of those names.

He understood the burden carried by the families who would soon stand outside at those stones.

When he finished, I quietly said with my hand up on his shoulder, “Sir, you did just fine.”

A few moments later, we stepped back outside and the ceremony began.

At the far end of the memorial walkway, Green Berets stood silently in formation. Each had been assigned one of the stones along the path. Each carried a single rose.

Then, in complete silence, they began to move.

One by one, they marched to the stone they had been assigned.

At the proper command, every Green Beret dropped to one knee in unison, placed the rose carefully against the stone, stood back to his feet, and rendered a salute.

Perfect every time.

No applause.

No theatrics.

Just silence, roses, names, and remembrance.

Afterward, families and teammates slowly gathered around the stones that meant something personal to them. People embraced each other. Some cried openly. Others knelt with their hands resting against cold granite.

That image has never really left me.

That moment changed the way I think about Memorial Day.

Before then, I mostly thought about it the way many Americans do, flags, ceremonies, cookouts, a long weekend at the beginning of summer.

But after serving at 3rd Group, and after standing on that memorial walkway year after year, Memorial Day became something much more personal to me.

Because those stones were not symbols.

They were sons.

They were husbands.

They were fathers.

They were teammates.

They were deeply loved human beings whose absence still echoes through the lives of others.

I think that’s why Memorial Day matters so much.

Because remembering the cost of war helps keep us human.

It reminds us that freedom is not abstract. It has names attached to it.

There’s wisdom in the fact that our nation pauses once a year to remember those who never came home.

Not to celebrate death.

Not to glorify conflict.

But to remember that every one of those lives mattered.

A nation that remembers the true cost of war becomes slower to treat it casually.

Because behind every folded flag is a family whose life was forever changed.

Before I close, I want to say something to all of you who took the time to be here today. (Also if you’re reading this now)

Thank you.

Truly.

Because in a world that moves very fast, where attention spans are short and everything competes for our focus, simply showing up for something like this matters more than you may realize.

It matters that communities still gather.

It matters that names are still spoken aloud.

It matters that children see adults stop long enough to remember.

These ceremonies matter because remembrance matters.

Recently, I found out that I’m going to become a grandfather.

I’ve noticed that news has changed the way I think about many things, including Memorial Day.

It has made me think more deeply about what we pass on to the next generation.

Not just freedom.

But memory.

Perspective.

Humanity.

I don’t think a meaningful Memorial Day requires grand gestures.

I think it begins with intentional remembrance.

Maybe it means visiting a memorial or cemetery a few times a year, not just on Memorial Day.

Maybe it means learning the story behind a name engraved on a wall somewhere.

Maybe it means asking a veteran not only where they served, but who they lost.

Maybe it means teaching our children why this day exists.

Maybe it means supporting Gold Star families long after the ceremonies are over.

And maybe one of the best ways we honor sacrifice is by helping make our communities places worthy of that sacrifice.

By caring for one another.

By serving those who are struggling.

By feeding the hungry.

By noticing people who feel forgotten.

By showing kindness in a world that often feels angry and divided.

For me personally, my faith teaches me that loving our neighbors matters deeply. I think one of the best ways we can show gratitude for the freedoms and blessings we’ve been given is by living lives marked by compassion, service, and humility.

Not because we’re trying to earn anything.

But because gratitude, when it’s real, naturally overflows into the way we treat other people.

Maybe, in some small way, every day becomes a kind of Memorial Day whenever we choose to live with gratitude, humility, awareness, and compassion toward one another.

I’ll be honest with you.

Memorial Day is not always an easy day for me.

There are memories attached to it that still ache a little.

Maybe they always will.

But I think that ache is part of remembrance. Because the opposite of remembrance is not grief.

The opposite of remembrance is forgetting.

Those men whose names are etched into those stones deserve better than to be forgotten.

So somewhere between this ceremony, the cookouts, the family gatherings, and all the ordinary blessings of living in a free country, I hope we’ll take at least a few moments to pause.

To remember.

To give thanks.

And to honor the people who believed this country, and the people in it, were worth defending.

Because every one of those lives mattered.

And they still do.

Have a meaningful Memorial Day

My Uncle Henry was one of the most interesting men I’ve ever known. He was my grandfather’s brother and the reason I tell and write stories today.

He wrote a column for the Gaston Gazette called Inside Gaston that eventually became two books full of stories about life in the old days around Gaston County. Uncle Henry had a soft voice and a calm way about him that made people lean in and listen.

He was also the Spivey’s Corner Hollering Champion. Back before modern communication, folks in the South would holler across fields and long distances to call people home for supper or warn them if something was wrong. Uncle Henry had mastered the art and won a contest. I vaguely remember Uncle Henry even being on Good Morning America sometime back in the seventies because of his hollering.

Growing up during the Depression, their family had little money, so they made their own clothes. Into his eighties, Uncle Henry still made his own overalls. He even made me a pair once. I know they’re around here somewhere.

One of the things I inherited from Uncle Henry was ear hair. Not ordinary ear hair either. Copious amounts of ear hair.

Uncle Henry’s ear hair was legendary. I don’t know that I ever saw the man trim it. It stuck out of his ears like shrubbery. You couldn’t miss it. My wife Tammy and I used to laugh and wonder why he never cut it. Maybe he liked the distinguished look. Maybe after a certain age a man simply decides he’s not worried about ear hair anymore.

Unfortunately, I inherited the Uncle Henry gene.

For years Tammy has been waging an ongoing landscaping war against my ears. Every so often she’ll sit me down with scissors and start trimming while I sit there trying not to move. I honestly never notice the hairs. She notices every single one.

Since leaving the Army, I’ve also grown a fairly robust beard. Tammy says I look like a Civil War general. I was asked to speak at a Memorial Day event nearby, she informed me that something would need to be done before I appeared in public.

Our son Jack suggested Floyd’s Barbershop in downtown Statesville.

Now I hadn’t been to a barber in probably forty years. I cut my own hair. Mostly by buzzing the whole thing down and calling it good. But trimming a large beard properly is a different skill altogether, especially when you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing, which I do not.

So Tammy and I headed downtown.

Floyd’s is run by Tim Head (Tim is Floyd!). Tim brought his brother Brandon on to the team along with their dad Jim. Its a family deal. Jim has been a barber around here for years. My mom used to take me to Jim’s old shop, the Sharpe-Head Barbershop, which may still be one of the greatest barbershop names ever created.

I’ve always suspected Floyd’s got its name from Floyd the Barber on The Andy Griffith Show, which honestly feels about right, seeing as Andy grew up an hour north of here. Evidently Tim was friends with two other guys named Tim. To tell the them apart, one was Tim, one was Timmy and Tim Head became know as Floyd, from the show. Legendary!

The current shop sits inside an old house built in 1913 . Its located in downtown next to the tire store! Wooden floors creak under your feet. The rooms of the old house have all become barber stations. One room used to be a bedroom. Another must have been the kitchen. The living room serves as the waiting area. Fans hum overhead. Music plays somewhere in the background. People laugh and carry on conversations from room to room.

The place has character everywhere you look.

Before we walked in, I noticed a hand written sign on the door.

“Be careful when you walk in. Puppy playing.”

Sure enough, inside was a tiny brown puppy asleep in a little dog carrier, living what appeared to be a perfect life.

We sat down to wait. A mom was there with her little boy getting his hair cut. Folks were talking back and forth. And there was Amanda.

I knew immediately she was Amanda because I had honestly never seen a woman barber before. She was talking up a storm while cutting some fellow’s hair and having the best time doing it. She had everybody laughing.

After the gentleman finished up, Amanda looked over at me and said, “You next?”

I pointed toward the other folks waiting and said, “I think these people were ahead of me.”

“Nope,” she said. “They’re waiting on these other guys. You’re mine.”

Up into the chair I went.

“What are we doing today?” she asked.

“Well ma’am,” I said, “I’m speaking at a Memorial Day event and my wife says I currently look like a Civil War general.”

Amanda laughed.

“I think we can help you out.”

What I quickly learned was that Amanda was from New Jersey and sounded exactly like somebody from New Jersey. She smiled constantly. Talked nonstop. Carried on conversations with everybody in the building while somehow still staying completely focused on cutting hair.

At one point she was discussing her upcoming baby. At another point she was playing with the puppy whose name is Poppy. Then she was talking to Tammy. Then back to trimming my beard like she’d done it a thousand times.

She cleaned up my beard. Gave me a proper high and tight fade, which are words I hadn’t used in years. I normally just shear my hair down like I’m headed to basic training.

And then she got to my ears.

She paused and said, “You got a lot going on here.”

“Yes ma’am,” I replied. “I surely do.”

As she started trimming around my ears, I told her about Uncle Henry and inheriting the legendary family ear hair gene. Amanda just laughed and kept clipping away.

“Would you like me to trim them?” she asked.

“That would probably be a good idea.” Tammy chimed in with some of her ear hair war stories.

“Well,” she said, “I can trim them with scissors or I can wax them.”

I looked at her.

“Wax them?”

“Yep.”

“Like women waxing their legs?”

“Exactly.”

I stared at her for a second.

“Well that sounds horrifying.”

She laughed.

“All the men who get it done thank me afterward.” She said men in the plural, interesting.

While she was getting the wax ready, Amanda started telling me about the scene in The 40-Year-Old Virgin where Steve Carell gets his chest waxed. Evidently that scene wasn’t acting. That was Steve Carell actually getting his chest waxed on camera and screaming like a wounded animal.

That did not inspire confidence.

I looked over at Tammy.

“What do you think?”

Tammy grinned immediately.

“Do it.”

And so the process began.

Amanda started sticking warm wax down into my ears with little wooden sticks while Tammy sat there giggling and taking photographs that I strongly suspect were immediately distributed to our children.

Then Amanda spun the chair around so I could see myself in the mirror.

Friends, I looked ridiculous.

I had wooden sticks sticking out of both ears while wearing that barber apron around my neck. I looked like some kind of experimental satellite dish.

Amanda stood there cooling the wax with a towel while casually walking away to play with the puppy and talk with the kids before returning to continue the operation.

Finally she looked at me and said, “Ready?”

“I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

Then she grabbed one of those sticks and yanked.

The sound was somewhere between Velcro and duct tape being ripped off the inside of my skull.

“OHHH.”

Then she proudly held up the stick for inspection like at the end of a hunting trip.

I’m telling you right now there had to be a hundred hairs stuck to that thing. It looked like a tiny scrub brush.

She repeated this process all over my ears. Inside. Outside. Earlobes. Places I didn’t even realize hair was growing.

Oddly enough, it didn’t hurt nearly as much as I feared.

And afterward?

My ears felt fantastic.

Tammy looked at me and said, “You’ll probably be able to hear me now.”

She might not be wrong.

Then Amanda finished everything off the old fashioned way with warm shaving lather and a straight razor across the back of my neck.

And I have to tell you something.

By the time I walked out of Floyd’s Barbershop, I felt different.

Lighter.

Calmer.

Relaxed.

If somebody had hooked me up to scientific equipment before and after that haircut, beard trim, ear waxing, and straight razor shave, I’m convinced every measurable stress marker in my body would have improved.

My blood pressure probably dropped.

My anxiety certainly did.

Somewhere between the puppy, the laughter, the old creaking house, the conversations drifting room to room, and Amanda turning a complete disaster of a beard into something respectable, I walked out of there feeling more human than when I walked in.

There’s not many places left where strangers still sit in the same room and laugh together.

Not many places where people slow down long enough to tell stories.

Not many places where folks know your name, ask about your family, laugh with your wife, and take care of you for a little while.

Maybe that’s part of what’s missing in a world built on outrage and noise.

Now I can officially say something I haven’t been able to say in forty years.

I’ve got a barber.

And her name is Amanda. And get this…. Amanda Barbera (Spanish for barber). Couldn’t be more fitting!

And somewhere, I think Uncle Henry, ear hair and all, would have appreciated her.

P.S. Amanda the Barber offered to was my nose hairs next time! We shall see….we shall see!

Today was Rogation Sunday at church.

For those unfamiliar with it, Rogation Sunday is an old Christian tradition centered around creation, planting, harvest, and asking God’s blessing upon the land and the people who work it. Instead of gathering inside the church building this morning, we gathered at a family farm out in the country beside a pond surrounded by trees.

And not little trees.

Ancient cedar trees.

The kind where the trunks are so twisted and thick they almost look like twenty trees grown together into one. Their bark was weathered and rough. Dead limbs hung from the sides. They stood in a long line that looked like an old fence row planted generations ago by somebody long forgotten.

I stood there staring at them longer than I probably should have.

I’ve always had a love affair with trees. Right up until about November when I have to rake leaves.

But when you really stop and think about it, trees are miraculous.

They produce oxygen.
Hold soil in place.
Cool the earth with shade.
Clean the air.
Provide homes for birds and animals.

Trees become houses, guitars, baseball bats, books, rocking chairs, and crosses.

Even as I stood there looking at those old cedars this morning, my mind drifted toward carving. I caught myself looking at some of the dead limbs and thinking, “Man, I could turn that into a hundred mushrooms.”

The homeowner laughed and told me I was welcome to come cut cedar anytime I wanted because there were fallen cedar trees all over the woods behind his house.

That smell of cedar has followed me most of my life.

It reminds me of the cedar chest our friends Joe and Carmen gave Tammy and me when we got married. It reminds me of love and home.

It reminds me of my time working at Eckerd Youth Alternatives years ago. Sometimes I would take the boys out into the woods searching for cedar groves so they could carve walking sticks and small projects from fallen limbs.

Funny the things you remember.

There was another tree on the property today that caught my attention too. Years ago, the owner brought acorns back from England and planted them there on the farm. Today that oak tree stands massive and strong, completely out of place in North Carolina and yet somehow perfectly at home at the same time.

Most people would probably walk right past it without ever knowing the story.

I think that’s part of what Rogation Sunday is trying to teach us.

To notice.

To notice the world around us again.

We live in a time where everybody seems angry about something. Every screen screams for our attention. Outrage has become its own economy. Noise surrounds us almost all the time.

But the world God made is still good.

Not the systems we build around greed and power and self importance. Scripture is honest about those things.

But creation itself still speaks quietly about the goodness of God.

Genesis says that after creating the world, God looked at it and declared that it was good.

I think trees remind me of that.

Trees symbolize life to me.

Some of the best moments of my life happened around trees. Hunting in the woods. Sitting quietly in the shade. Walking mountain trails. Watching the wind move through leaves.

Even now, some of my favorite moments happen sitting beneath the old oak tree in my yard while I carve cedar with a knife in my hand. There’s something grounding about it. Prayerful almost. I find myself thinking about my grandfather, my dad, my brother, my family, and the people I love.

My grandfather loved trees too. Especially oak trees and, unlike me, he loved raking leaves.

Sometimes we’d sit in the backyard at his house or ours and stare up into the giant oak trees above us. He used to call me “Braddy.”

“Braddy,” he’d say, “how many leaves do you reckon are on them trees?”

I’d shrug and tell him I had no idea.

“I bet there’s a billion leaves on them trees,” he’d say. “And when they fall off, we’re gonna rake ‘em up and burn ‘em.”

My grandfather loved trees, but he also understood they needed tending. Dead trees had to be cut. Firewood had to be split. Every year I probably got ready for football season splitting logs with steel wedges and heavy hammers beside him.

A while back, Jack (My son) and I walked down to the old farm our family used to own. Most of the land has been sold off now, but one thing still standing there is an old poplar tree.

It’s massive. I have no idea how old it is.

Carved into the bark are the initials “J.S. 1942.”

The Shoemaker family owned the farm before we did, and sometime back in 1942 somebody stood beside that tree with a pocketknife and carved their initials into the bark.

I found myself wondering what was happening in his life when he carved it there. The middle of a world war. A young man maybe. A moment that mattered enough to mark.

The tree kept growing anyway.

Now there’s a picture of my son and me standing beside that same tree more than eighty years later, another generation preparing to put down roots of its own.

Three generations connected by one living thing rooted in the same ground.

Not long ago, Tammy and I found out we’re going to be grandparents.

The other day I was sitting beneath the oak tree in my yard carving something for somebody when I found myself thinking about my grandfather. About his patience. His kindness. The way he taught me things without ever making me feel small.

And while I sat there beneath that tree with cedar shavings falling around my boots, a thought settled deep in my spirit.

It’s your turn now to be a granddaddy.

It caught me off guard how emotional that moment felt. I cried.

Maybe because I loved my grandfather so much.
Maybe because I suddenly understood the weight and gift of what had been handed to me.
Maybe because part of me still feels unworthy of it.

But there beneath that oak tree, I realized something simple and ancient.

This is how life works.

One generation roots another.

We learn.
We receive.
We pass things on.

Patience.
Faith.
Stories.
Kindness.
Hope.

This is the way.

When I was a kid, my dad planted willow trees along the bank of the Middle Fork of the New River near our house in Boone. Back then they looked like little more than sticks pushed into the ground. I remember wondering how those tiny saplings would ever become anything significant.

Now, decades later, those willow trees hold the riverbank together. Floods have come and gone, but the roots remain.

Maybe there’s a lesson there too.

The Bible begins with trees.

The Tree of Life.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Abraham met God near the great trees of Mamre.

The Psalms speak of people who are “like trees planted by streams of water.”

Zacchaeus climbed a tree trying to catch a glimpse of Jesus.

And then there’s another tree.

Scripture says they hung Jesus on a tree.

The story of the Bible begins with humanity reaching for the wrong tree. But Christ climbed onto another tree to redeem the world.

And at the very end of the Bible, the Tree of Life appears once again.

“The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”

That verse hits differently these days.

Maybe that’s why scripture talks about trees so much.

Trees are slow.
Steady.
Faithful.

Most of them will outlive us.

They quietly spend their lives giving shade, bearing fruit, holding things together, and asking for very little in return.

Maybe that’s what Rogation Sunday is really about.

Not escaping the world, but remembering that God’s goodness is still all around us if we’ll slow down long enough to notice it.

In trees.
In rivers.
In cedar shavings falling at our feet.
In old stories.
In grandparents.
In children who haven’t even been born yet.

Maybe we’re all called to spend our lives becoming a little more like trees.

Rooted.
Steady.
Life giving.

Holding things together for the people coming behind us.

Before we left the farm and rogation service today, this was the blessing spoken over us and may it be a blessing to you as well.

“May you be a new creation, Christ for those to whom Christ shall send you. And the blessing of God, our creator, redeemer, and sanctifier be amongst you and with you always.”

Amen.

As I finished up the coffee, I heard these words, “I woke up at 4:30, wide awake, worried about those babies.” That line came from my wife of nearly 35 years.

The babies she’s worried about are the offspring of one of our feral cats that adopted us a few years back. They live in my old outbuilding, the woods, and generally do what cats do. We have never been cat people, but we do watch cat videos from time to time on social media.

The funny part is, she’s never liked cats. She’s been allergic to them her whole life. But because she’s kind, and that’s just who she is, these cats didn’t stand a chance.

Since these cats adopted us, we’ve named them with monikers from old TV shows, like Helen and Thelma Lou, Lucy and Ethel. They come and go. But this year, we’ve had a litter. Of course we’ll ensure the new kittens are adopted, and we’re working on a way to catch the adults so we can get them fixed.

But on this Mother’s Day, I thought it appropriate to talk about my wife, who by all accounts has mothered many a stray, and not just cats.

With these new kittens, Tammy’s mothering instinct has kicked into full gear. We’ve caught a coyote on our security cameras sneaking around our backyard in the wee hours of the morning. You know what that means. He’s looking for targets of opportunity. It just burns my wife up.

She goes to the back door and peers outside. When the new mother, Lucy, comes up to visit, she has conversations with her about her babies as she scratches her head.

I’ve seen this before.

When our kids were little, she would get up in the middle of the night just to check on them, to make sure they were still breathing. No reason, just a mom being a mom.

It’s been this way from the day I met her. I knew early on in our relationship that all she ever wanted to do was be a mom. And a good mom she is.

Recently, we were cleaning out a closet together so I could access the attic to find a roof leak. I noticed a bunch of artifacts from my children’s early years. There were little dresses and very small Carolina Panthers jerseys, along with totes full of Hot Wheels cars and a box full of stuffed animals. There were even some very small cowboy boots. Everything hung in a closet for use.

But what stood out was her.

It turned into a kind of show and tell.

She’d pick something up and remind me of where it came from. A birthday. A Christmas morning. Who wore it. What they were into at the time. I had forgotten half of it. She hadn’t.

I know why she’s saving these things. It’s for the next generation of little ones. All of those items at Goodwill would be a dollar or two, but to her they are precious as gold. Each one carries a memory, so they’re not going anywhere.

Along with all those days, there were meals. Food so good that when I was gone far away, I used to think about it. Those meals continue to this day. Every Sunday, our children come over for a home-cooked meal that their mom gladly prepares.

She doesn’t do this just for our kids. Over the years, I’ve brought home a lot of stray folks too. People who were wandering a bit and needed a meal and a table without judgment. My wife has been the catalyst for all of that.

These cats have been a reminder to me of this lifetime of watching this woman do what she always wanted to do, just simply be a mom. Some days it was incredibly tiring. Sometimes heartbreaking. But she has remained steady.

When our kids were little, she’d always make their food first, and by the time she got ready to eat, there would be more requests from the little patrons. Of course she’d stop making her own plate and take care of them. I thought about writing a children’s book called “Mom Never Got to Eat.”

Her life as a mom was shaped by her family. Her mom and her grandmothers. All of them lived this same kind of selfless service to their families.

She’s passed this on to other young moms over the years as they try to learn something that really has to be lived to be understood.

When Tammy and I got married, she pulled down some pots and pans from the attic that she had bought as a teenager. I remember thinking, as a young, nervous guy about to get married, “This girl has always wanted to be a wife and a mom.”

She doesn’t make a fuss about it. She doesn’t tell anyone this is the only way. This is just the way she chose to live, and for three and a half decades I’ve watched in amazement at what has come from that.

There’s a verse that says, “Her children will rise up and call her blessed.” In our world, that looks like this. At the first sign of a challenge, our children call her. Dad is usually the second call. She has a track record of wisdom, calm in crisis, empathy, care, and concern. So of course she’s the first call.

Heck, she’s the first call I make.

So today, on Mother’s Day, she gets the day off, but I doubt she’ll take it. She’ll probably help solve a problem, tidy something that needs tidying, and of course she’ll be worried about those cats!