Faith, Folklore, and Friends

Peas. They have been a staple of my diet all my life. My siblings and I even sung about them: Peas, peas, peas, eating goober peas . Thankfully, I don't remember the rest of the song. From July to early October, in good years, they were on the table at dinner and supper. Beautiful peas. After the season had passed, we would have them canned or dried. Oh, NOW I remember why we didn't get bored during the summer. We shelled peas for canning! My parents planted rows and rows of peas, their purple hulls calling to us. We picked them in half-bushel baskets and five-gallon buckets. Because our family liked the purple hull variety, our thumbs and fingertips would retain their purplish color for weeks. After Mama had canned all she needed, the rest of the peas were allowed to dry on the vine. When they were completely dry, we would pick them and store them in tow sacks (burlap bags). On some cool October Saturday, when the sky was so blue you cried and a brisk breeze was blowing, we ha...

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. Psalm23.2 It is a noisy world. There is apparently no escaping the clamor of traffic, people working, animals, television, music so loud it hurts, televisions, games, phones.....it just goes on and on. Can you remember the last time you were in an environment that was perfectly quiet? Where can we hide from all this babel? We seek to hear God's voice. We beg Him when we pray....just send a word, Lord. Just tell me what to do. Please. Perhaps, if you have surrendered your heart and are asking in wisdom, He is speaking. You just can't hear His voice because of the noise pollution around you. I wonder.... Would you enjoy an intimate conversation with someone with music in their ears, listening to something else, not paying attention to you? Would you want to explore deep concepts with someone on their way to work, giving you just a small percentage of their mind while they weave in and out of traffi...

Amy at HopeistheWordblog.com has issued a challenge for all of us to read To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee this month. I had planned to reread it this year, since this is the 50th anniversary of its publication. Now is the time! It has been said that To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the most read book of the twentieth century that deals with racial relations. It does that, and does it well. During the turbulent years of racial unrest in the South, some people tried unsuccessfully to get it banned from public schools. It is much more than a book about racial relations: it reveals the fears and intricacies of childhood and growing up in a small Southern town. Harper Lee, the author, grew up in Monroeville, Alabama. I visited the small town a few years ago. The courthouse/museum continuously shows the movie based on the book. A play based on To Kill a Mockingbird is preformed annually there. Harper Lee still lives there, choosing to continue her quiet life in southern Alabama rather ...

Can something (or someone) really change? This colorful caterpillar spends his few days crawling, munching on leaves and stems, possessed with an inner drive to eat more and more, hiding from predators and pesticides. I wonder, does he know? Does he know that while he is bound to the earth now, eating and surviving, that someday he will fly? Really fly. With beauty that snatches the breath away, he will spend his summer flitting from flower to flower, not bound by anything. Metamorphosis: a profound change in form from one stage to the next in the life history of an organism. Maybe, just maybe, we can fly someday like the butterflies! Now that you've cleaned up your lives by following the truth, love one another as if your lives depended on it. Your new life is not like your old life. Your old birth came from mortal sperm; your new birth comes from God's living Word. Just think: a life conceived by God himself! That's why the prophet said, 'The old life is a grass li...

Today is July 31. What a month July has been! It has been full to bursting. . . . *Celebrating our freedom, which never gets old, and I pray never will. *Teaching a full course at UNA in little more than three weeks: intense but successful. *Lightning striking our house during an afternoon thunderstorm, melting the computer while I sat right in front of it, burning a streak from top to bottom of the huge poplar right off the deck, knocking off part of the deck in its anger, running through copper pipes in the house until it burned an exit, spending its energy in a second that seemed like an eternity. *Cucumbers and squash perishing in the record heat. The tomatoes dug in and continue to fill out biscuits and salads. *Sharing hurt and losses and joy and music with dear friends. *Finding a new connection group full of strength and kindness. *Watching granddaughters grow brown and tall as they soak up the summer. *Enjoying music at Handy Fest, tapping our f...

SOME keep the Sabbath going to church; I keep it staying at home, With a bobolink for a chorister, And an orchard for a dome. Some keep the Sabbath in surplice; I just wear my wings, And instead of tolling the bell for church, Our little sexton sings. God preaches,—a noted clergyman,— And the sermon is never long; So instead of getting to heaven at last, I ’m going all along! Be still and know that I am God! Psalm 46:10

Celebrate this holiday Saturday by enjoying the beautiful campus of the University of North Alabama.