The Art of Preaching as memoir

 his is a dictated text for an email back to me that I could blog. Could be typoas and run on sentences but thewhile the style may be suspect,, trust me, the content is strong

    Whatever do find the Mcentyre review at Baptist News Global and another good one online

     Carol McIntyre, the pastor. The first Baptist Church of Greenville has a review of a book by the pastor at Boulevard Baptist in Anderson Austin Carty. He’s written a book about the preaching and how it how do you work personal stories into the text You must read McEntire‘s . I went to Furman on a ministerial, church related vocation scholarship. I was up front with them but never got the compelling call given my temperament and other factors. Biut I have been a lifeong fan of good preaching.  I I wasn’t committed to that as such I didn’t go to seminary I’ve never preached a sermon. I am proud of the eulogy I gave for my father in 1999 and that’s it another blog here. A lot of people liked it Quoted William Blake out of the gate. I’ve been thinking lately about trying to inveigle myself to the first Baptist Church Gaffney, hoping that the association there would see the benefit of having something version of what used to be the January Bible study. This would be a consecutive Wednesday night with using the Curtis Freeman. Great book his text Pilgrim journey. It’s a short book, but it’s a beautiful condensation about how to view scripture and engage the mystery of the church and community through the ages. He has a chapter on the Saints saying that one great understanding of the Holy Spirit of the trinity is to study the Saints, and he says that’s comparable to an investigation of Christ And a devotion to the scripture is to look at people through the ages who have a incarnated what that was all about and so I was gonna talk about Stuart SteWART Newman and Paul James a great Lehman from my dad‘s first church in Newport Tennessee, where I was born When Steve Sprurrer was in the fourth grade at the Newport grammar school, but I was turned up James obituary the other day quite remarkable fella and so I was gonna talk about those two and then focus on people in Gaffney and even take a look at Mr. John Hamrick. He was powerful influential devoted Baptist Lehman had a private audience with president Ford and 74 textile magnet and also look at Wayne Whiteside, the football coach in with The insights of Matt Potts into the writings of Cormac  McCarthy, and the sacraments yeah I was gonna make the case so just to make note of McEntire‘s review the book she reviewed. Did Curtis Freeman there a lot of people with a lot of ideas out there, but I’m confident enough to say that all this will be well worth your time between now and March one other thing I think it’d be great if anybody’s reading this or I’ll be approaching other people collection of sermons are the best of my generation that would include Richard KREMER a road scholar nominee Brent  now at the first Baptist Church of Knoxville Justin Cox. He’s coming along with a friend of Jack Causey in Statesville, North Carolina and then there’s a McEntire, the guy Somerville SOMERVILLE and even if you only other side of the Mississippi River couple from Dan Vestal, yeah just a collection of Steve Shoemaker for sure Their best not more than three and use McIntyre‘s review of the Anderson preacher yeah I think that’ll sell a few copies so maybe somebody out there can put all that together. I get a free copy and review sermons before that happens though yeah I’m proud. I got a collection of Willimon. Best sermons from Duke over 50 years and then also Flemming Rutledge, her book hearse collection that includes goddamn Christians about Will Campbelland then a few thoughts by Barbara Brown Taylor so there’s some in of course Frank Harrington there’s some great sermons out there. I gotta find that poem what you gonna do in the river overflow God bless y’all.

   Had a good chat with Austin Carty two days ago. Hope to visit him Sunday , pick up the book and get the senior discount at Cap D's around the corner. Turns out Carty of High Point NC Wake Forest and Emory knows or knew Causey well and his predecessor at Baoulevard was at Gaffney as pastor and before him Causey himself

Uncle Herschel and Furman's Confederate commencement speaker

I Have recently blogged about Mary Beth Stuckey commencement speaker at Furman for her class of 2013 also a product of Prestonwood Baptist church in Dallas a Flaming christian nationalist congregation in Dallas Texas.

    Like the Randy Newman song,Rednecks, Aliie Beth came in dumb and come out dumb too. Now she has embraced with Lara Trump and others the Trump line on Cracker Barrel. See great piece at Baptist News Global on the same subject, a site that recently named Allie Beth and her straight arrow opposition empathy.

    As the line goes in Road to Perdition, It's all so effing hystrrical. Witness the dance yesterday online of Uncle Herschel and Trump dancing to YMCA making the Barrell Americna again.

    This opinion is much more substantive if you read the BNGlobal piece.

    I was in the Cracker Barrel yesterday. I called on the manager. He said it was mcuh overblown and like the two transgender if there are that many in South Carolina, He was not aware of any Barrels getting the work over. Still dark with Mallo cups in the merchandise area and a fireplace.

   On occasion Cracker Barrel has been a sacred place for me.A few years ago at the Ft Payne Barrel I had a brief but delightful conversation with Alabama's Randy Owen on the writer Ron Rash . And in the mid nineties my Dad and I stopped in the Cracker Barrell in Kennesaw Ga after a CBF gathering in Atlanta. I t was registering with me his Baptist witness and his friendship with the great ones Randall Lolley, Bill Sell Self and Stewart A Newman. I started crying. I said Daddy, I'm Messed up. He said I know, but not so loud.  

    My Grandfather Jordan on Mommas's  side  was  a Lincoln Republican and his Father skirmished for the Union in North Alabama. See Howell Raines on the North Alabama Union fighters and also see my blog about the home guard threatening to kill a distant ancestor on Lookout Mtn. He hid out over a bluff you could see from the family front porch I lived in for thirty years on Hwy 11 where Dietrich Bonhoeffer came up the road in 1931 

Guest blog from Arkansas Kidney doctor on Health science

 We are witnessing in real time a dismantling of science and medicine unprecedented in our history. I’m referring to policy and funding attacks on premier institutions which promote and protect the health of every American. Especially the young, elderly and otherwise vulnerable. The CDC, NIH, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, NCI, and other organizations.

The agencies tasked to do the highest level scientific research, develop medicines and vaccines, and promote public health strategies to protect all.

As a physician I know people who work at these places. They are the best and brightest we have. Until recently, everyone… supported and benefited from their work over the past half century. Times have changed.

Bacteria and viruses are the most non-discriminatory entities on earth…  Cancer also. They do not care about gender, ethnicity, political affiliation, where or if you worship… what you believe… or if you’re a butcher, baker, candlestick-maker. They simply infect and kill with no regard.

And now we have a number of top scientists and heads of these agencies placed in the untenable position of making policy decisions based not on science but on political whim and pressure.

I encourage you to ask anyone who spent a life studying and practicing anything related to science…  medicine, for example… I don’t know of any reputable physician regardless of partisanship who supports the policies being promoted by our current Department of Health and Human Services as led by Robert Kennedy… Zero scientific training. Unintelligent, unserious, dangerous. His policies left unchallenged will harm your friends and family.

There’s a lot of political disagreement in our nation. This is the most nonpartisan issue imaginable. Funding cuts, anti-science policy, and the wanton dismissal of premier scientists and public health experts…. places all in danger equally.

People of conscience sometime have to pick a hill on which to die… No one should perish unnecessarily on a hill of imminently treatable and preventable infectious disease or cancer. Take a moment, think… do you really want to live with medieval medicine based not on science… but superstition? Put pressure on your elected officials to correct policies which could be the ultimate killing field.

Fish camps in Upstate SC and nearby

 Friends gonna cross state lines in the Buick this afternoon tocheck out a celebrated fish camp in North Georgia I have heard a lot about.  From there hope to check out the Flounder in Spartanburg SC and the Caro Mi in Landrum. Ca Ro Mi not exactly a fish camp but the trout has great reputation.

    Hoping to get some perch with my all you can eat catfish this afternoon. Perch for sure at the Flounder; my late brother the Sweet Jim Willie was a fan. I think Hush puppies at both places and I will try to onion rings. Cracker Barrel has good catfish, but nothing like th fish camp experience.  I liked Brannon's in Gaffney but that was fifty years ago. And thicketty mtn had a camp but it burned down. So at least four, maybe five by Christmas and I will be reporting, co come back.

   Moe's on Stone Avenue n Greenville has good catfish and collards but they do bbq and other things as well. But no complaints about the fish and tartar sauce is good 

    Continuing August 19:  Leatherwood was an adventure indeed, authentic, hardscrabble, the real deal. Industrial fan near the counter as AC was out. They were true to their word, all you could eat. Ambience worth the trip but will not be going back soon. Slaw was good but nothing special about the fish other than the variety. Met a pretty girl trying to find directions, Sweetheart but I'm not 25 anymore and didnt want to scare her.

    I found the way to the Flounder in Spartanburg and a place called the House in Greer but neither are all you can eat. May try to negotiate a Sampler platter. Going to Cap D in Anderson SC today for senior day and hoping for kind price on third piece of fish to go with the the two piece special.   Been a while for Cap D's. It gets the job done. Miss the one in Ft Payne Alabama. Like Krystal hamburgers getting harder and harder to locate.

The Scarf

   The Coplin Weaver family and cousins totalling about thirty shared the weekend of July 20 sharing family oral history. A grand project for any family at one time wealthiest family in Guntersville Alabama. In  in the sixties The Mother and four daughters their own pew at the FUMC in town had plenty to tell. The Father, insurance man and realtor was a Baptist.  Reports are the often told story of their caretaker of color  Mary Phinell got the most traffic. 

    But I have a story to tell of twenty years ago here going public for the first time.  I wanted to tell this a story at the reception for the wedding party on April 1 2006, the Friday evening before . Yes, it was April Fools’ Day 2006 and the night before they were married, but I was asked not to say anything because the father of the bride now deceased may be encouraged to share and my friend Susan Weaver loved her father, but she was scared that if me and him said something who knows where it would go, so I had to stay quiet while Mark Morgan of Duke, brother of the fiance,  Morgan charm the group and got all the accolades and I just had to sit on it But here’s my story. I was president and founder of the sugar booger adoration society, sugar booger, married the Prince so that was Susan Weaver and John Morgan my assistant vice president  was Andy Myers of UPS ; and  in charge of recruitment was Russ Beeene,  a screeenwriter, who had  an obvious case of undiagnosed Asperger‘s so we didn’t want it to grow and it didn’t . So  on that night. I wanted to tell the story Susan beginning when she was about 20 years old shared a lot of family information with me and with the two friends Andy and Russ we felt like we did a good bit over that six years that she was enchanted with the prince or always more like six and more like 14 years total, but he came around and it was good for everybody and it was a great wedding , one aunt Katie called it storybook they got Jackie Weaver‘s 1956 Cadillac convertible and road from the church down Main Street to the library that was under construction and it was really humid and everybody was sweating, but we had a reception there they had they had their wedding meal there but the reception the night before when people were talking And so Mrs. Weaver was a quiet woman. She made perfect on math on the ACT in 1965 and taught math at the high school and I ate lunch at school a lot and I would see her at school but I said I saw her one day in the hall outside the luxury. I said Ms Weaver I have a story about Susan. I gotta tell you, but you can’t tell her I told you,  and Ms Weaver Looked me straight eyes   said I don’t see why not she tells you everything I’ve ever said and I said you know what can I say? I mean she nailed it. That’s pretty much the truth and so but so Susan this has been about 1993. She calls the house about 11:30 at night and my father who had married Edna after mother died my mama he was disturbed about the whole situation. I said not worry about it. It was a special situation so she was on the phone she was in a dither. She wanted to get the Prince  something for Christmas, but didn’t want to show her hand. She wanted to do something  do something appropriate and ask my advice and I said well I haven’t had a lot of experience in romance, but there was a girl at Furman I dated for a year and a half and second Christmas rolls around and I said ask my mama said mama You know what should I get this girl for Christmas? Momma said  she thought a real nice scarf would be appropriate so I got her a scarf and  at Christmas I gave her  a ride from Furman up to her aunts in Gastonia North Carolina. We stopped at the roller rink in Spartanburg  and they were playing the crocodile rock but I couldn’t skate.  it was hilarious and just a sweet night and so I thought I was in love for sure but by February of 73 of the next year a fellow classmate moved in on me and it was over for me and they got married went to   USouth Carolina  law school and had some beautiful children and grandchildren >  Susan says OK OK I won’t get him a scarf

Robert Grainier, Train Dreams the Movie will release in September

   Keep an eye for it on Netflix and then limited theatrical release. Based on novella nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2012, got great praise from James Wood in the Guardian. Find and read that review. I met Wood at Sewanee writers summer camp about 15 years ago. He said he was aware of Marshall Frady but dealt almost solely with fiction.

      Here from a good wiki page on the novel you should read, quoting

         Grainier's life is a mystery from start to finish, a sort of blank space that he fills in and that we fill in with him. At the core of such fiction is the conviction that our lives will remain essentially mysterious to us—that as human beings we don't know what we are and cannot grasp our own experience. In the character of Robert Granier, though, Johnson seems to be suggesting that we need not understand our own lives in order to live them, enjoy them, fully inhabit them–and also that we might take some comfort in that, if in anything at all."^[21]

Guest post, the Crabapple tree by Todd Heifner tirbute to his brother

   My friend Todd Heifner Youngest rother Brad died in late April .  Was very impressive memorial service you can google at New Millenium church in Arkansas. Eric Motley grand friend of Brad since Samford in the mid nineties flew down from his post as associate director of the National Art Museum in DC to deliver a eulogy as did Mart Gray magnificent effort.

     Last week Todd posted this memory on facebook

                  What Now For The Damned Crabapple Tree?

You’d have to know what a nightmare the yard was at our home just a few days after we moved in. It’s a hard thing to realize that the biggest investment of your lifetime now is the embodiment of your favorite movie—maybe ever—“a river runs through it.”

Our backyard caught all the water from the neighborhood it seemed and we wondered would we ever establish a yard?

Well, given the beauty and serenity that is now ours out back, I’m not sure I’d trade it. That’s thanks to lots and lots of intention, sweat, and moving the same plant from place…..to place…..to place. But to be sure, it is now a place of respite and grace given the vision Amanda had for the yard, and that she and our friend Genaro and I have cultivated these past five years at her direction.

I didn’t ask for much when the landscaping was picked. Just a few specific irises and the planting of two crabapple trees—ones I remember specifically from the days of my childhood.

But the crabapple trees weren’t for me. They were planted on our 3/4 acre wetland for the purpose of producing great harvests of crabapples for my brother Brad.

Brad was many things to many folks. For me, at least, a part of who he was generated from a healthy mix of nostalgia, love, and generosity which he heaped in massive amounts on those he loved.

And Brad loved everybody.

When my brothers and I were growing up, one of the rituals of our summers—just days after school was out—was a one-way bus trip from the Nashville, Tennessee Continental Trailways bus station on Sixth and Commerce Streets downtown to the Texarkana, Arkansas Trailways Depot on Stateline Road. You could step out the front door of that Texarkana station, walk to the corner of the block, cross the street and be in Texas.

We did it every summer even though the last admonition in Nashville was “Not for any reason are you to leave any of the bus stations where the bus stops along the route. Not in Jackson, nor Memphis, nor Little Rock, nor Hot Springs, nor Texarkana. Do you understand??”

With a head nod of ascent to the parents, we would board the bus and just wait for the 11 hour bus trip to pass when we knew—just like Sam Bowie, or Davie Crockett, or Sam Houston—we would dismount our ride and saunter into Texas without any constraint of oversight, just us cowboys and our earthly goods.

My brothers and I were blessed to have all four of our grandparents into adulthood, but those summers when we were teenagers and older grade school kids making our annual journey to Plain Dealing, Louisiana on the bus, to spend five or six weeks with our grandparents…….well that was just heaven.

One of the many great memories of those summers was climbing my paternal grandparents HUGE crabapple tree in the middle of the gravel turnaround in their driveway. We would scamper up the tree and collect crabapples for the world’s greatest crabapple wars, fought in the backyard between the sheets and other wash my grandmother had hung out to dry. It was a fit battleground for us young warriors.

But even more what I recall was gathering bushel baskets full of those crabapples, and my grandmother—the one who couldn’t cook!—making the finest homemade crabapple jelly anywhere in those parts.

And we would feast on it for breakfast on toast, or over in the afternoon with peanut butter on slices of goosedown soft Holsum white bread. It was heaven.

Well younger brother Brad not only partook of the fun, the food, and the firepower of a stinging hot crabapple, he also watched and listened, learning how to make that crabapple jelly and refining his own recipe over many, many years.

About the time Amanda and I relocated to Pelham some six years ago, Brad told me in a late night phone marathon how hard it had become to make his annual batch of crabapple jelly. Due, he said, for want of suitable crabapples with which to cook this homemade treat. They were increasingly hard to find, he said.

So I indicated to Amanda my desire to plant such a tree in our yard in order to supply Brad a key ingredient for years to come.

We planted two of these trees initially, but lost one to water and root damage.

The second tree, however, has struggled and survived through these past half dozen years. This spring it was covered in blossoms indicating a fine crop of crabapples was on the way.

I got great joy in thinking of delivering such a copius yield of this hardened fruit to Brad at harvest time this year for him to recreate the recipe of our youth.

But that was not to be, due to Brad’s passing some seven weeks ago on May 2.

And so I was left wondering upon returning home from his memorial service—

“What now for the damned crabapple tree?”

Having convinced myself to remove it from the back yard due to the rankish smell it makes when unpicked crabapples fall to the ground in late fall, I looked out the family room window Friday afternoon before last, considering how best to fell the tree. I was berating myself for having planted the thing in the first place—“a stupid idea,” I thought, “and more nostalgia than sensible.”

And that’s when I saw it.

The tree was moving, teeming with life almost as if a mini-earthquake was disturbing this tree alone.

And then the darts that started to fly from within the tree—hummingbirds, dozens of them, like a swarm of bees around a hive.

There were so many of them the tree literally looked as if it were shaking—burning, if you will, with a voice from the Great Beyond.

And so for now, it seems, this has become the tree where the hummingbirds rest. A tree that was dead in my eyes, particularly given the grief at having lost my brother this spring, and all the memories and promise the tree held. Yet it is now more alive than ever! Teeming with copius amounts of nostalgia, love, and generosity.

And teeming with life……in the shadow of death.

Who knows, maybe I’ll try my hand at making crabapple jelly this fall. Or maybe not.

But I do know this……..

I’m thankful for the hummingbirds.

And for this crabapple tree.

And for my brother Brad.

Willful ignorance saturates South Carolina gubernatorial candidates

What ignorant clowns, MAGA clown are entering the SC race for governor.. You Lie Joe's son Alan Wilson, the flake Nancy Mace and now the fundamentalist from North Spartanburg Josh Kimbrell are in.

     And now the Lt tennant governor of Travelers RestPam Evatt says she will uphold "christian values" on immigration. What kind of Tony Beam foll disciple can she be?

     After his commencement speech at Wake Forest, CBS sixty minutes Scott Pelley  needs to camp out at Mace Seacoast Church in Mt Pleasant and see what's going on there. The speaker's children are Clemson grads and Dabo Swinney is no longer a Southern Baptist because of folks like Wilson, Kimbrell and Mace 

     I'm sure they will be trying to get some transgenders to move in the state to break some darling darlings now with a kill in a volleyball game to increase thier chance. I dont know one transgender volleball player in the state but I.m sure George Singleton will find it if there is one. Nikki Haley was desperately looking for one when as a Clemson trustee she embraced Charlie Kirk and TPUSA couple Novemebers ago at Clemson

     Here why don't yall surprise the rest of the nation and take a deep repeated listen to David Graham interview on NPR Fresh Air. Hell do something actually earthshaking and read the book. Have staff do a group read with you of Joe Crespino wonderful Strom Thurmond's America--Nikki had never heard of it nor seen The PBS Blinding of Isaac Woodard-- ; and one more if it doesnt keep you past your bedtime: Jill Lepore great recent history of America, These Truths.

       And Robert Jones easy google for Shutting Down CRT Debate. See the Atwater Memo reference . A pocket of Furman faculty gets the implication.

     Great Friend of LD Johnson, the Abe Lincoln of Baptists a generation ago, would call all you infidels "Soul molesters". That was a favorite prophetic witness of Will D. Campbell. I could go on and on but yall got a lot of sophomoric notions and embarass me.

     And Josh,find a better preacher. Ive known the jack leg you got since Furman, a state leader in the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. Have North Spartanburg and TRey Gowdy at FBC do something righteous and start reading Baptist Global News site twice a week so they can begin to distinguish their ASS from a Holel in the Ground.

       Stay tuned and follow the developing the story about the Timmon Family and the renovation of the Furman basketball arena. How long will their name be on in in the wake of the Seeking Abraham and Placing Furman reports.

Poem the Call Away and the Kingston Hwy Rock Store and Johns Store

   This last week had some exchanges with a kidney Doctor in Arkansas. Shared the Robert Bly poem The Call Away and he got several comments on his facebook. Recently he wrote a piece on his facebook about two gas stations near his home. That sparked in me thoughts on the Rock Store and the Johns Store on the Kingston Hwy about a quarter mile apart, about five miles east of Rome Ga on the east side of Dykes Creek in walking distance of my grandfather's farm he bought in the early fifties and the Baptist church where was strong influence. Retired chief army Chaplain Doug Carver credits my Grandfather's faith and witness as big reason he rose in the ranks.

  

      A passage in Cormac McCarthy's last novel the Passenger   reminded me of the meditations I had on my Grandmother's farm in my thirties, a break, a retreat from the first thirty years of my life. I could almost describe Nanny and Pap's 120 acres in similar language .

    Spot passages from pages 165 to 167 of the novel

        When he got back to the creek he followed it up into the woods and crossed on the flat stones below the old wooden spillway. The spillway boards were cuped and back with age, and the water that ran over them looked dark and heavy. Of the gristmill itself nothing was left save the stones of the foundation together with the rustd iron axle that had once carried the wheelmill and the rusted iron collars in which it once had turned. ( continuing for a page and half of rediscovering his grandparents farm we come to this)

      Bobby understood that over a few hills lay Oak Ridge which  brought his father from Princeton in the forties.  His existence was owed to Adolf Hitler. The forces of history that ushered his troubled life into the tapestry were those of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, the sister events that sealed forever the state of the West

     Ive been in and out of Rome Ga since my first year of life and lived there good bit of the time from the fall of 81 through December of 86.  The fall of 81 I got entangled with a former Miss Alabama contestant who made a significant impression on me for a good six months. She lived on the east side of Rome near the neighborhood of the shortlived South Carolina coach , Will Muschamp formerly at Florida. My first cousin Tim wife Shirley also in that neighborhood a niece of the former treasurer of South Carolina . Across the hwy from them was the Ledbetter Mansion, farm and estate .  She'd live in Atlanta for a couple years near the Big Chicken and would often take the Kingston HWY where Johns and the Rock Store became part of her traveling memories just a few miles out.

      Sadly an upscale Dollar General has located about two football fields east of the Rock Store screwing up the neighborhood which only 150 some odd years ago was the founding of Morrison Campground --worth a google search, and the potable spring water; just a few years after Sherman left Rome in the fall of 64. The Novel E. L. Doctorow  The March takes it up from there.

     Come back to this blog soon as I have a great story about Tom Edsall of the Wah Post and a ride I caught at Johns store in june of 86