Tag: life

Ode To Joy

The date was June 3, 1997. Nineteen months earlier, my life had fallen apart (that’s a story for another time). I was now living in the rural community of Oswego, SC, serving a church and healing up. As I rode from the parsonage on Red Apple Lane to the church on the corner of Lodebar and Leonard Brown Roads, I saw a couple of my church members out in their farm fields, taking care of the land. On my left was Billy McCoy, on a tractor, doing something to keep the crops growing. Across the street was his brother, Sam, baling hay. Billy and his wife Stella were leaders in the church and were very supportive and helpful to me. If you rode by their home and saw the front door open, you were invited to stop by. A glass of water or tea awaited you, maybe a snack, but most of all a listening ear, an open heart, and a wise mind if you needed any of them.

When I saw Billy and Sam working, an idea hit me. I called Billy. He answered. “Billy, do you know what day it is?” “Not really,” he replied. “It’s not your birthday, is it?” “Nope. What’s the date?” He thought and said, “It’s the third of June…” and I broke into my best Bobbie Gentry, singing “another sleepy, dusty, delta day…” I slid into those notes like I was sneaking into my house when I was a teenager. “It’s Billy McCoy Day!” I shouted, then resumed singing, “I was out chopping cotton and my brother was baling hay.” Although it was not cotton season yet in Oswego, or down in Mississippi, Billy got it immediately.

Since then, I have called Billy every June 3 and sung part of that song to him. Usually, I get him early in the morning while he is out on the porch with his break-of-day coffee. We catch up with each other, share news of our families, always laugh about things, and promise to keep each other in our prayers.

Today, June 3, 2025, is the 28th time I have called and sung to him. Twenty-eight years of love and support, friendship, and laughter. After I hung up the phone, I realized I was smiling.

Music often expresses the joy we feel. The words may say something meaningful, but the tune frequently speaks in more profound ways. One of Ludwig van Beethoven’s final works was Symphony Number 9, which concludes with his powerful “Ode to Joy.” We often sing that tune in church, saying, “Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee…”

People have different songs to express joy in their lives. Some sing hymns, like “Amazing Grace” or “This is My Father’s World.” For some, it may be an old pop song, like James Taylor’s “Country Roads” or “It’s a Beautiful Morning” by The Rascals. Chris Stapleton’s “Joy of My Life,” Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” and Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” all come to mind. For me, today, it’s “Ode to Billie Joe.”

The song itself is not that joyful. It’s rather tragic. Billy Joe MacAllister commits suicide. Something…or someone…was thrown into the Yazoo River. Brother gets married and moves away, Papa dies, Momma doesn’t want to do much of anything, and the singer spends her days dropping flowers off the Tallahatchie Bridge. Have a nice day.

But the song brings back memories of people who loved me, helped me heal, laughed, and cried with me, and a community where I found my wife. Oddly enough, “Ode to Billie Joe” has become my Ode to Joy.

Baby It’s Cold Outside….

Okay, I’m about to lose more friends, because today I’m going to say something that will really tick people off. And that is- I like the cold weather!

There. I said it and I’m sticking to it. A lot of you…okay…well…all of you…are complaining about the cold. Except for my friend Jeff. He’s from Erie, PA. He says, “You call this cold? You don’t know cold!” Many of them are longing for the blistering heat of summer. And that’s okay. It will come around soon enough.

But I like the cold. And here’s why.

  • It gives me an excuse, if I need one, to put on sweats, make a pot of coffee or mug of hot chocolate, sit around the house, and read books, do some writing, maybe watch a movie. Note- I do that anyway, but I don’t feel near as bad about it when it’s cold outside.
  • If I do decide to go outside, I breath in and am reminded that I am alive. I feel the cold air enter my lungs, and sometimes I see it come back out. I like bundling up in layers of clothing until I resemble the Michelin Man. And I like making eye contact with those other brave souls who are out walking dogs, checking the mail, getting some exercise. We all know who are the hardy ones in the neighborhood.
  • And you can always put on more clothes in the cold, while you can only take off a certain amount in the heat.
  • And it gives me the chance to check in with my friends via text to make sure they are okay. I know I could do that anyway anytime, but it seems less weird for me to check in on them when it’s cold. This in itself is good and warming to me because it reminds me of how many friends I have.

I pray for those who have problems with cold weather- the homeless, people without adequate warmth, the sick. And for those with no one to cuddle up to. I try to do things to help them- donating coats, gloves, hats, small heaters, electric blankets. Except for the cuddling. They are on their own.

So, pardon me while I bundle up and go out for a short walk. I love it! Baby, it’s cold outside!

Banished to the outer darkness of….

Most mornings I have a routine. After taking my meds, and getting my coffee, I spend time praying, studying, and meditating. Following that I open up Facebook, and try to lighten some people’s day by posting a bit of Useless Information and a historical event for the day. Sometimes I add commentary, sometimes I just let them stand. Often I will post something else that’s on my mind.

But this morning was different. When I tried to open Facebook, I received a message that my account had been suspended because I had broken Instagram’s rules of conduct. Which really surprised me, since, while I have an Insta account, I never use it. I could not send Facebook a message since I could not get into Facebook. So I wrote one to the folks at Insta.

This is not the first time something like this has happened to me. About a year and a half ago one of my Facebook pages, the one for Vox Memorial UMC, was blocked because we had broken Facebook’s rules of conduct. Which, again, was a surprise because the only thing we ever published was a daily photo with a Bible verse from a subscription service. And it went to both Brown’s Chapel and Vox’s pages. I contacted Facebook. Several times. Never heard anything from them.

It’s odd that they said my Insta account broke the rules, so they were suspending my Facebook account, but not the Insta account.

I fully do not expect to hear from them. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp, and others, does not have very good customer service. But what did I expect? I don’t pay for them (other than what little I buy from those who run adds). But still, you think you’d hear something.

I had the memory of Ernestine, the telephone operator played by Lily Tomlin. In her comedy (but very real life) sketches, whenever she would be handling a complaint, she would  always end with “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.”

Since I do a lot of communicating with my friends through Facebook, I feel like I have been banished to the outer darkness, where there is weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, and definitely no Likes. And I am so used to it, I am having difficulty figuring out how to communicate with them as easily. There are the quotes that I find interesting or thought-provoking (“God does not want to clean us up, but to make us new creations.”), observations around my house (Cathy complains about the squirrels eating all the bird food, but she goes out in the heat of the day to make sure the squirrels have some clear cool water to drink), and letting people know about things I get to see (Dave Mason is coming to Florence at the end of July). None of these will get posted.

I do have a few, not many, subscribers to my blog. But it does not have the flexibility and ease of interaction to replace what I had.

I have several friends who do not use Facebook. Some do not have an account, others have them but rarely use them. And they seem to get by fairly well. As a matter of fact, they seem pretty happy and well-adjusted (not that my FB friends aren’t).

I can always start a new account, using a different email. But that doesn’t help me get back to the literally 1700 “friends” I had on FB. Even more, there are several groups that I am the moderator of, that I can no longer contact. Even if I opened a new account I could not join those groups, because I am the administrator.

So, I think I will be off Facebook for a while. And for those of you who want or need to contact me, you can do it the old-fashioned way. The way we used to do it back in the dark ages.

Text me.