Freddie Owens was executed tonight. Owens murdered Irene Graves on November 1, 1997 at a Speedway convenience store in Greenville, SC. She was a 41-year-old mother of 3 children. Owens was 19. On March 6, 1999, he was sentenced to die. He was pronounced dead at 6:55 pm, September 20, 2024.

I saw an interview with one of Ms. Graves’s children, Ensley Graves-Lee, who was 10 at the time. She was asked if she thought Owens was guilty, and she replied that the State of SC had done its best. She did not seem happy about the impending death of her mother’s killer. Nor did she seem sad. She said when it happened she was a minor and had no control over things then, and now she is an adult and has no control over what was going on now. She spoke of how she and her two older brothers missed their mom and how hard it was growing up for them. My heart ached for everyone.

I have never supported the death penalty. I know some who have Biblical reasons they quote to support it, and I know many who quote the same Bible to argue against it. I’m not going to get into that right now.

Some see it as a deterrent to murder. It is not. Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Portugal, Germany, Denmark, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom have abolished the death penalty. They all have very low murder rates, New Zealand being the highest at 2.4 per 100,000 people. Most of them are less than one. Overall, the United States has a murder rate of 6.9 per 100,000 people. This is an average, since in our country some states have the death penalty and some do not. Twenty-seven states, including South Carolina, have the death penalty. The average murder rate in them is 7.3. Mississippi’s is 23.7, Louisiana’s is 21.3. South Carolina’s is 11.8. In 2022 we had 2,374 murders. While Owens is the first execution in 13 years, I doubt that it will lower our rate. I have had people tell me that if we were to execute more people it would lower the rate. Evidence says otherwise.

Twenty-three states have abolished the death penalty. The murder rate in them is 4.7, much lower than the other states, but still higher than much of the rest of the industrialized world.

I have known quite a few people who have been affected by murder. Family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers, schoolmates. Living in South Carolina, with our love of firearms, violence, and disrespect of others, it’s hard not to know someone who hasn’t been touched by a murder. Some of the murderers have been put to death, and I have talked with the families, friends, and co-workers of the victims. I have seen two responses. One is forgiveness. On one level I understand it. They have known themselves to be forgiven, and they know that to bear anger, hatred, and revenge will continue to hurt them. As hard as it is, they find a way to forgive. A few have even spoken to the murderer and let them know. They do not say they are not hurting. But they decide to carry with them the memory of the loved one, but not the anger. That part I struggle with, because…well…I have never had that happen to me.

Then there are others who long to see the murderer die. Many are angry that their death will be “easier” than the death of their loved one. They long for more than death, but agony for the perpetrator. And I have sat with them and listened and prayed. Some have said to me that the death of the murderer will finally give them relief. But it does not. The death of the other person cannot replace the years of love, friendship, laughter, hugs, and so many other things they will miss. After visiting with the victim’s families following the execution, when they can talk about it, the thing I hear them say most is, it wasn’t enough.

It never will be.

As you know, I am a bibliophile. Blame it on my mother. I remember sitting by her on the couch when I was young, as she read books to me, pointing out the words as she read them, sometimes pointing to the pictures that went along with them. I became fascinated by the worlds they contained. Of course, the early Dick and Jane readers helped me to get started, but Mom quickly moved on to Winnie the Pooh. I could see the Hundred Acre Wood, smell the trees, flowers, and grass, and walk along with Christopher Robin, Pooh, Piglet, Owl, and Eyeore. It was not long before Mom helped me get a library card for the Inman library, which was in a side room in the fire station in the small town. It was within easy walking distance for me, even as a young boy, and I would visit there several times a week to trade in my old books and get some new ones. There was always a stack to be read somewhere in the house on Littlefield Street.

As I grew, I became a voracious reader, consuming almost everything I could find. Biographies of people who invented things- Morse, Edison, Carver- made me curious about how things work. Pioneers in compassionate living- Barton, Nightingale, Wilkerson- prompted me to be kinder. Classic literature showed me the power of words. The only book I refused to read when I was in school was Silas Marner. This was at the beginning of my rebellious teens. (Years later my sister gave me a copy and I read it. Sorry I waited so long.)

I not only like to read, I like the physical books themselves. I like to feel the heft of them in my hands, be able to easily flip back and forth between pages and chapters. I like the way they smell. I have tried using e-readers, Kindle, Nook, and others. I understand why some people prefer them. You can carry whole libraries in your pocket. But I prefer something that takes up space on my shelves.

I also prefer buying used books. Not only is it better for the environment (since it does not use up any more resources than it already has), there’s something of history in them. Knowing people have read them, thought about them, argued with them makes them more alive to me. Of course, the authors that are still living do not make any residuals from them, and that bothers me, because I want them to keep writing. Still, I prefer used.

I like them for another reason, too. I write in my books. I underline, write in the margins, put notes on the flyleaves, and generally mark them up pretty good. (Librarians hate me!) And I love to see where other people have done that. You can see what they thought was important, mistaken, or worth remembering. Years ago, a retiring minister friend of mine gave me a set of Clarke’s commentaries on the Bible. First editions, they had been owned by a series of Methodist ministers in South Carolina since they were printed in the early 1800s. There were notes from sermons that were preached during the Civil War, newspaper clippings from the turn of the century, and a treasure trove of other information that had accumulated in them. I kept them for years and then passed them on to a younger clergy.

Good used-bookstores are hard to find these days. Which is a shame. I would walk into one with the idea of finding a copy of Walden, and come out with it, plus Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, Watson’s The Double Helix, and (just for fun) Waterson’s The Days Are Just Packed. You would find things you didn’t know you needed.

Now, most used-bookstores are online. Alibris, Better World, Thrift, and others have extensive collections. You can almost always find what you are looking for, but you don’t find much else. There’s not a lot of browsing available. But that’s where I have to get most of my books now.

We have a new bishop coming to the South Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, Leonard Fairley. I read that he published a book of poems, Who Shall Hear My Voice? I ordered a used copy online. Poetry may be the best way to get to know a person when you can’t meet them face to face. The book was in good shape, and it (unfortunately) did not have a lot of markings in it. (It does now.) But there was something that struck my attention. Between two poems was a photograph of a young girl in a pink tutu. There was no writing on it to indicate who she was or where it was taken. The back of the photo has some identification of the company that developed the photo, including the year 2011. The book was published in 2009. Someone was using this photo as a bookmark. It was between two poems, one titled Phoenix Rising and the other Flower Unknown. Those two titles seem appropriate for the placement of this little girl. I wonder who she is. Did she continue her dancing? It’s thirteen years later now, so is she in college? Was she the child of a Methodist clergy up in North Carolina (where Fairley was serving at the time of the publication)? What is her story?

Maybe I’ll make up one about her. Who knows, it may end up on a shelf in a used-bookstore one day.

For the last couple of months, during this severe drought we have been having in my part of the world, every Sunday we would pray for rain. Well, it seems our prayers were heard. With a vengeance.

I have been thinking about this whole idea of praying for rain, or for any particular change in the weather. I remember the summer of 1986. It had not rained in months. Crops were drying up. Cattle were dying. Governor Richard Riley asked those who were praying people to pray on their Sabbath one weekend in July. I was serving Wood’s Chapel UMC, in the country outside of Greer. I announced that next Sunday we would be taking time to join others in praying for rain. The next Sunday, before worship, I was walking down the hall when I felt something hit me on the back of the head. I turned around and there stood Fannie Wood, the 4’10”, 80-year-old treasurer, her long grey hair in its tight bun on her head, holding an umbrella she had just whacked me with.

“Fannie, why did you hit me?” I asked. “Where is your umbrella?” she responded. “Fannie, it hasn’t rained in months,” “If you’re going to pray for rain, bring an umbrella!” “Yes, ma’am,” I said, rubbing the back of my head.

Back in seminary one of my classmates, a delightful woman from the Pentecostal Holiness Church, told me of praying for rain for her father’s land. He was a farmer, and they needed rain. She said it rained on his property, and not on anyone else’s. She said even when he had lots that were separated from each other, and surrounded by the farmland of his neighbors, it still rained only on his land. “Don’t you think you might have prayed for the neighbors, too?” I asked. “They didn’t ask me,” she said.

When I served the rural church in Oswego, we had an informal early service, attended mostly by hunters, farmers, and people who were going from Sumter to Mr. B’s restaurant in Lydia for lunch. Almost invariably during our prayer request time, some farmer would ask that we pray for rain (they did not have enough) and another would ask that we pray that the rain stop (they had too much).  “It’s the battle of the opposing prayer requests!” I would think, but not dare say. “Let’s see who is the most righteous. After all, the prayer of the righteous availeth much.” (According to James 5.)

While the Bible does speak about the weather, it doesn’t say much about praying for it. The only times it clearly does is in 1 Kings, and it is referenced in the aforementioned James 5, and that was mostly just to show who was boss.

The drought here has been bad. Corn did not tassel, beans dried up. Who knows what the cotton will do. All our lawns are crunchy, and for a while, the Little Pee Dee River, which is not really little, dried up. It was affecting farmers, people who worked outdoors, older people, and people without adequate air conditioning. So, we prayed.

There has been about 18” of rain fall on my yard over the last three days. Fortunately, I am on high ground. My front yard has puddles, but no flooding. People in my neighborhood who live near Jeffries Creek have found their sewer systems backing up and flooding into their driveways and yards. Out in the country, where most of my church members live, none of them have flooded homes yet, but some are getting close.

Maybe we prayed a little too fervently.

I am not sure that we should be praying for the weather directly anyway. Remember when Pat Robertson, famed televangelist of the 700 Club, prayed for a hurricane to avoid his Virginia Beach headquarters? He said that his prayers caused God to redirect the hurricane. So, God moved it away from Pat and his multimillion-dollar site, and decided to destroy some other people’s homes? I cannot imagine any of them being attracted to Pat’s god. Besides, Virginia Beach does get hit by severe weather, but not as much as South Carolina beaches. This is due to geography, not to righteousness.

Maybe instead of praying for rain (or snow or clear weather) we should pray for something more important. Like praying that we will wise up about the things we are doing that are affecting our climate. And maybe even go as far as to do something about it. Global warming and deforestation, among other things, are changing the weather. And most often, not for the better.

And praying for those who are affected by it. What can we do to help the farmers, the elderly, the sick, the poor? Those who are hit by extremely high tides, floods, and winds? It seems that the Bible, both the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures, speaks more about that than changing the rain gauge.

And maybe pray to learn how to find joy in whatever weather we have. My niece Megan, a young woman who is very insightful and wise, lives in Mankato, MN. They get a lot of snow. And it becomes a slushy mess for a long time. She once wrote, “If you can’t find joy in the snow, you will have less joy, but the same amount of snow.” Same goes for rain.

I am glad for the rain. We did not need so much of it all at once, but it will hopefully replenish the water tables. And the Little Pee Dee will flow again. And I am grateful to God for whatever comes my way. So, I will try to help those around me and those I see in need on the news.

And that will be my prayer.

That well-known poem by the reclusive poet of Amherst has popped up on several sites, along with commentary from most folks. In case you are not familiar with it, here it is-

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

It may be one of the most quoted poems by preachers, surpassed only by the one about the old man and the violin (The Touch of the Master’s Hand by Myra Brooks Welch). By the way, Dickinson did not title the poem, nor most of her 1800 poems we have knowledge of. She simply wrote them in her (for the time) unusual style.

I understand the meaning and the sentiment, but I have begun to think she might have been, if not wrong, at least not open to a wider understanding of the human soul.

The poem begins by protecting what we think of as fragile, the human heart. The heart, our metaphorical one, as well as our physical one, is actually strong. We think of it as fragile because it hurts so much when it does have problems. And I am not sure any of us can protect someone from having a broken heart. It is in the very brokenness of our hearts, minds, souls, bodies that we are most human. It is the thing that binds us together and causes us to support one another, to stand up against injustice, and to work for the inclusion of all people.

I dare say that none of us know what it is like to go through life never having our heart touched and hurt. And, if we are honest, we also admit that we ourselves have been the cause of someone else’s heartbreak. Realization of the first- our own heartbreak- keeps us connected to the rest of humanity. Realization of the second- our agency in breaking someone else’s heart- should drive us to our knees and to humility. I’ve seen lots of people admit the first. Few the second. But those who do somehow come out on the other side with a heart of flesh, not stone.

My heart has been hurt a few times. So I hurt when others hurt, and cry when I see others cry. And, unfortunately, I have been the cause of a few heartbreaks myself. Which, as I continue to learn, keeps me more aware of that side of me and hopefully prevents me from doing it again.

If we cannot prevent hearts from being broken, maybe a better hope would that we would walk with a person through their brokenness, to let them know that they are not alone, to help them find someone they can lean on. The older I get, the more I realize I cannot fix anyone. And maybe I shouldn’t be trying to. But I can walk with you, listen, and keep you connected to the world where there is a coming out on the other side.

Another more contemporary poet and musician, but like Dickinson somewhat of a recluse, put it this way- “Don’t mind if I fall apart, there’s more room in a broken heart.” (Carly Simon, Coming Around Again).