Born Again Ben

Now that this writer has lived for seventy-fiver years, contemplating the great beyond, i have the experience of a very dear friend leaving this world and being taken up to the place that Jesus has prepared for us. Looking back on those early years of getting to know Ben, one of my first memories of him was shown in a photo of him painting the interior of a house that we were about to moving into.

But painting was only one of his multiple vocations. Ben was a hard worker, a husband, a father, a laboror in our Creator’s great earthly project. a life partner, a pastor, friend, a shepherd, a publisher. After his ascent, the magazine that Ben had tended for many years published a tribute edition.

In this edition, friend Chip mentioned standing at Ben’s hospital bed the day before friend Ben died. Along the reading path of that special edition, many family members and friends commemorated the treasures, the testimonies, trials and tribulations that Ben had endured during his 40 years of service to his people, to mankind, to God. He was a man whose purpose was to bring leaders and followers together, reconciling disputes among people who were joined together in a common purpose, casting estrangements into forgiveness and peace, while his wife brought six admirable people into this world. Connie would attend others’ childbirths. She and Ben followed the path of service to their people, their followers, their friends, family. In the course of 40 years of service, Ben endured periods of being rejected by some, set aside, finding himself in a position to labor, painting, planting trees, all the while planting seeds of hope and encouragement along the way, breaking ground for new growth, growth to extend the kingdom of God on this earth, growth of thousands of pine saplings on a crew with me and some other fellows, to keep the Cox family happy and healthy while he was in between pastoral assignments. All the while, he was demonstrating mercy and grace, reconciling old enmities, breaking destructive behaviors, reading and preaching the ancient Word, the Good News, living the message of sacrifice, love, joy, peace, consoling widows and ophans, burying the dead, all after comprehending in errant youth that we can do nothing of eternal significance apart from being joined to the giver of life, the Creator, the vine on which eternal branches are nourished and irrigated with living water; Be understood the pit of despair where some of us fall , because he had been there, comprehending the transformation from a reckless lifestyle to salvation, utilizing that awareness of being born again and presenting that testimony to others who are in harm’s way, all of which he did to the very end. Sometime back in 1990’s, our friend David Browne set up a sound studio in our town, Boone. I gathered some friends together to help me record a song, Boomers’ Choice. In the recording, Ben’s son, Nathaneal, is playing the drums. Ben’s voice comes out loud and clear on a couple of refrains, where’s he’s singing, with our ensemble: “hey, hey, hoe, is there anybody home?”. . . You can hear the song in this link which is on my website: Boomer's Choice I look forward to singing with Ben again in heaven! King of Soul

A Wonderful World

A young man in Louisiana was called into the US Army during the war to defeat Nazi Germany and their Japanese allies. He was assigned to the signal corps, which involved him in radio technology. Not long after his training had been completed in Utah, the war ended when the Allies drove the third reich into the ground and their demonic leader shot himself in the head in a Berlin bunker. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, so to speak our American military had teamed up with Albert Einstein to devise a way of using atomic energy to manufacture a super bomb, an atomic bomb, the likes of which no man had ever seen. They used the finished product to inflict atomic explosions on Japan, an event unlike any that mankind had ever witnessed or experience. In the sweet by and by of progress, we developed technology for peaceful us of atomic power to generate electricity. When the big war was over, Louis was released from his military training. He returned to Louisiana and studied forestry at Louisiana State University. There he met Kathryn, a hometown girl who was majoring in chemistry. They married. Soon thereafter, they brought two boys and two girls into this world. Having obtained employment as state forester for the state of Mississippi, they bought a house, using the G.I. bill funds to get a start in post-war America. Their son, Carey, born to Louis and Kathryn in 1951 on a Friday 13th, July, was photographed while striding through the early days and driveways of the baby boomer generation.

Meanwhile, back in Baton Rouge, Kathryn’s mother, a widow, married a prosperous insurance man who had started his own insurance company, because. . . because that’s what Americans do; they start companies to make products and perform services. Carey’s maternal grandmother, Lelia, and her husband enjoyed travels in different parts of the world. Somewhere along the way, Lelia purchased a precious pottery, which had been set upon a marble table top in Lelia’s living room. Many years later, the vase was brought to our home, where Carey and Pat have lived since 1992, on an a wooded hillside in the Appalachian mountain, near Boone. In a moment of reflection on life’s precious memories and artifacts, I set these items on a deck rail and snapped into photographic history the memory of daddy’s shortwave radio and mama’s vase that her mother had given her.

The short wave no longer sends signals across radio waves of the world, because i don’t know how to operate it. But my dad did, and I remember him. The vase represents a prosperous life, now long gone, that had been lived by my grandmother in her travels around, what Louis Armstrong called, a Wonderful World. http://www.micahrowland.com/carey/Boomer's Choice.mp3 King of Soul

Understanding

Understanding is a long word. It combines a preposition, under, with a verb, standing. “Standing” is the present (here and now) tense, meaning that it is happening now. But the word “understanding” functions as a noun, something that is present in the mind of a person who comprehends the meaning, or the importance, or the significance of whatever is happening, or understand the meaning of an object, such a book, a document, a work of art, statue or any given thing that happens to show up. A STOP sign is understood by the driver; an EXIT sign is understand. When a person achieves old age, as this writer has after 75 summers, their understanding of this world, or this life, is more complete than it was at, say, age 25, or age 50. We old folks like to think that we know a thing or two about what is going on in this life, whether its obvious, or behind the scenes. I’ll provide an example here. Consider the events that took place at the US Capitol on January 6, 2020, when our Congress was attacked by a mob of proud boys, oath bleepers and 3%ers, along with a bunch of other wild people.

There are two ways to understand this event. Either it was lawful and permissible, or it unlawful and criminal. Was it in the same category as the American Revolution, a legitimate cause with a belligerent strategy, or unjust attempt to seize power and authority? Or was it a rebellion, as the southern states had attempted in the Civil War? In our present circumstance, our United States of America is in a divisive predicament. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, who established the foundational document of true understanding. Understand it by reading Mattew 5: “Blessed are. . . the gentle people, people who are pure in their motives, people who have been persecuted even when they were right, Jesus advises opponents in a court to settle their differences before they drag the court people into the dispute. He also advises us to turn the other cheek when someone slaps us with an insult or a punch or some other offense. The bottom line of this treatise on understanding is: try to figure things out, calm down, make peace with your opponent before the sh** hits the fan, or the punch is thrown or the shot is fired or whatever.

Now that I have presented a reasonable explanation of “understanding” and its importance, I’ll direct you to musical representation, as conducted by the Moody Blues, in a place far away, a time long ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sp5iMzgENM

El Shaddai

YWHW stretched out the universe with a tapestry of stars and planets, moons and tunes of spinning wheels. Along the way YWHW created us people. YWHW appointed the man as angular and agile, the woman as beautiful and bountiful. When the man and the women joined themselves together, new boys and girls were born into the world. As time passed, the boys and girls grew up to be men and women.Then the family cycle became a continuing cycle, a heritage, with one season following another, laden with happiness and tears. When it all gets down to it, we are all strung out into this life, trying to make a joyful sound without some high and mighty authority depriving us of our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

Mothers and fathers, their lives strung out like gut strings on a fiddle, hoping to stretch those forte’s and adagios as far as they can before the final notes of life’s melodies are sounded. . . do ponder their expanded life, perched upon the heights of maturity, middle age and then old age and beyond to whatever is eternal. They would ask themselves, regarding those young ones whom they have brought into this shtetl world: “When did she get to be a beauty? When did he grow to be so tall? Wasn’t it yesterday when they were small? I can’t remember growing older. When did they?”

Lastly, when the holy elder is asked to pray for the tsar, he prays: “May the Lord bless and keep the tsar. . . of maralago far away from USa! Glass half-Full

Empire

In kingdoms, long, long ago. . . China India Babylon Persia Egypt And then there were. . . Assyria Greece Rome, but eventually split into kingdoms.

and somewhere along the way. . . Byzantium Russia on the other side of the world. . . Maya Aztec

In Medieval and Modern Times. . . Spain Austria France Germany There was a time when the sun shone on. . . Great Britain

And once upon a time in a former republic far, far away. . . America

Glass half-Full

Jonah

Long, long ago, in a place far away, in a kingdom by the sea. . . The word of the Lord, the Creator of the universe, came to the prophet Jonah, saying: “Arise, go to Ninevah, the great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has become known to me.” As we were wandering on the Yucatan shores of Mexico this afternoon, I noticed this ancient Mayan city that had fallen into ruins:

As I was contemplating the parabolic Jonah/Jesus connection, it seemed to me that these ruins might resemble the ancient city of Ninevah that was in peril during the time of Jonah. Now I don’t know but I been told that the ancient city of Ninevah had become a place where corruption and something like wicked magamania proliferated and accumulated, like sargasso sludge on the shores of ancient history. And so, “ The word of the Lord came to the prophet Jonah saying: ‘Arise, go to Ninevah, the great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has become known to me.” But Jonah neglected this divine command; he decided to sail to another locale, a place known then as Tarshish, probably somewhere on the Mediterranean, between Cyprus and Spain. But the Creator, the Master of the Universe, El Shaddai/YWHW, had other plans. So. . . when the sailors of the ship suspected, with a little help from on High, that there was something fishy about the passengers on the ship, they began to worry about the voyage as the wind whipped up to a furious gale and the good ship and crew were in peril. When the sailors realized that their passenger Jonah was trying to get away from the Lord’s calling, they conducted an enquiry. Long story short. . . Jonah confessed that he had boarded the ship in an attempt to get away from the Lord’s calling him to deliver prophetic warnings to the people in Ninevah. So they solved their near-shipwreck problem. They tossed Jonah into the sea. Suddenly, he was in serious trouble underwater. But the Lord had mercy on him, even in the depths of his Mediterranean peril. The Lord appointed a whale to swallow him; so Jonah was in the belly of the whale, as it turned out. . . for three days. Then the whale spit Jonah out. The scene might have looked something like this, with Jonah mired in sargasso sludge.

Later. . . many years later, when Jesus was living in this world, he compared what would be his post-crucifixion entombment to Jonah’s ordeal in the belly of the whale. “Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12:40) Glass half-Full

Justice and Mercy

Dispense true justice, and practice kindness and compassion each person to each person; and do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the immigrant or the poor folks, and do not make trouble for people you don’t like. Do for other people what you would like them to do for you. Don’t tread over them like a rug on the floor. Pay attention, all you wise guys, all you rich folks; you do this, that and the other, thinking that you are so special and privileged, but you have neglected the more important legacies of our nation’s history, justice and mercy and helping those who cannot help themselves. Let justice and mercy roll down from the far north to the deep south, as the Missouri, the Mississippi and the Ohio roll down from Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. . . and even beyond that. . . to our southward neighbors, beyond the Rio Grande, past the Gulf of Mexico. Heal the sick, provide help and guidance and glasses for the blind, and guide them so they do not stumble on the walls of the nation or the stalls of immigration. Receive the poor folks, the weary people, the huddled masses yearning to be free!

Conserve your resources and be generous with your heritage, as giving is more precious than receiving, and giving, without measure, gives in return the wondrous yearn for peace and justice, almost manifested, time and time again, until we get it right, or left or whatever the help of America provides, overcoming the will to power, casting aside the selfishness and the magamania that so easily besets us. Walk hand in hand, and together we’ll stand. . . on the threshold of the American dream! http://www.careyrowland.com http://www.micahrowland.com/carey/Mountaintop.mp3

Born in the USA, I grew up with an occidental perspective on this life, .viewing the world through a scope of western civilization, history and culture. As far as we know, based on ancient biblical history as reported by Moses and the Bible, it all started in Euphrates valley: Adam and Even. . . Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth et al. There’s also the epic of Gilgamesh, a kingdom of Uruk, which makes sense, from my perspective, because Abraham left a place which the Bible names “Ur of the Chaldees” when he decided to head west. From that time forward, western culture has pretty much move toward the setting sun ever since. Judaic culture migrated westward toward Greece, joining up with the Athenian wise guys blending biblical religion with philosophy. As Christian faith and culture expanded, becoming more and more organized along the way, important people were taking charge of things with empires and kingdoms strung out along the way, The Romans had an impressive run, eventually joining up, thanks to Constantine, with Christians along the way. After many years, the Roman empire split up, with authority, wealth and culture being distributed regionally among kings, dukes, bishops. The European expansion ran all the way from what is now southern Turkey, then called Asia minor, to the western shores of the European continent, where Spain and France are now. In 1492, Spanish Queen Isabella. and King Ferdinand II commissioned an Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus, to sail westward over the Atlantic ocean, to discover what they might find there. They reached the Bahama islands and established a colony. . . and the rest is history. Truth be told, Columbus was not the first European to set eyes on America. A Norse explorer, Leif Erikson, had sailed to a northern coast, probably what is now Newfoundland. When the Europeans began sailing to the New World, a new phase of history was being established, from Atlantic to Pacific. The rest is American history. Now here is, as Paul Harvey used to say. . . the rest of the story. Once Europeans began coming here and establishing their cultured way of living, world history was changed forever. Europeans considered the New World natives to be primitive. There were battles, conflict and bloodshed when European invaders, advanced in technology and military hardware, tried to take over in America. Even so, In their so-called primitive way of living, the native Americans held an awareness of this earth that is far more sensitive to our natural world. We’ve come a long way, since ancient Babylon and Ur of the Chaldees. In our civilized way of doing things, we’d best maintain standards to preserve our earth in lifetstyles that replenish and repair the earth as we go along toward whatever the westward gold rush has compelled us to go, so we don’t end up like Custer did. Sitting Bull's Eyes

glass half-Full

The Eagle

While spending some time in Tulum, Mexico, I noticed this Mexican flag.

The flag was draped on a wall, near a cenot’e, where people swim in a pool of sparkling clear water that is fed by an underground stream. Gazing at the flag, I was fascinated with the eagle, clutching a snake. As an American, I can relate. Our national symbol is also an eagle. My curiosity about the image widened into a search for eagle references in my favorite book for research, that ancient collection of scripture that we call the Bible. I noticed, in the 30th proverb of the wise king Solomon, that he was fascinated by “the way of an eagle in sky, navigating the high winds in order to scope out the terrain below.” The eagle glides on the high winds, soaring and sweeping, all the while keeping his eyes on the ground below, in search of some animal that he may swoop down on, for a meal. Yes, Virginia, our national symbol is a predator. Read ‘em and weep, y’all, but remember this: our great nation has enacted a history of revolution based upon the freedom of all men. Ultimately, we had to fight a terrible civil war in order to assure the freedom and dignity of all people.

Today, visiting here in Mexico, seeing the eagle on the Mexican flag, there is no doubt that the Mexican people have had their share of revolution against their mother country, Spain. They liberated themselves from Spain in 1810. Their flag symbol presents an eagle perched on a cactus while devouring a serpent. When I viewed their flag today, I saw the determination of the Mexican people to free themselves from Spanish hegemony, just as we Americans freed ourselves from British colonialism. (For all ye Brits out there. . . no offense. . . we still love you blokes.) So we see that the Mexican republic presented the eagle on the their flag as a symbol of their determination to overpower the Spanish empire that had strived to keep them in colonial bondage. In the same way, our American republic presents the eagle as a symbol of our original determination to acquire independence from Britain. And that has worked out quite well for everybody, including the Brits who did just fine after we shook their snaky colonial hegemony off of us, like an eagle overpowering a snake. Glass half-Full

Mountain

In 1958, when I was nine years old, my parents drove us from Mississippi all the way to Seattle, where my dad attended an international forestry commission. We were driving through the Rockies. There was a stream in the valley below us. As we rounded a bend in road, lo and behold, there was a cattle drive, right in the middle of the road, conducted by some cowboys. I was amazed. These fellers looked just like the cowboys I’d seen on TV. . . Roy Rogers, Rowdy Yates, Lone Ranger, Ben Cartwright and his three sons. We had to stop; a cowboy let me climb up on the horse with him; my dad snapped a photo. It was a wondrous moment for a boy from the deep south. Those Colorado mountains were only the beginning of my mountain experiences. When we got to Seattle, we were driving through the city when I happened to glance up and see a great pink apparition floating in the sky, but it turned out to be Mt. Rainier. Six years later, my aunt Lena and Uncle Cooper were driving me and my friend Johnny through Mexico. Suddenly, I noticed a mountain in the distance. I’ll never forget that moment. Farther along, I had another mountain wonder moment when we rounded a curve; suddenly I caught a glimpse of Acapulco beach, stretched out below, along the Pacific Coast. It seems my youthful mountain wonder inspired me ultimately, to move to the Blue Ridge in 1975. While living in flat Florida, I had seen a movie, Where the Lilies Bloom, that prompted my decision. While living in Asheville, I attempted to start a newspaper, the first issue of which was prompted by a group of us boomer dreamers to prevent the NC DOT from cutting Beaucatcher mountain so they run I-40 through it. Well, it was a nice try, but so much for youthful idealism. A few years later, when we moved to Boone, I spent a couple of years working on a construction crew, to build a the Blue Ridge Parkway around Grandfather Mountain, a major peak of the Appalachian range, the oldest mountains in our world.

Now we live in the side of a small mountain, near Boone, about 25 miles from Grandfather. In all those years since, I’ve learned a lot about mountains. Moses brought the ten commandments down from Mount Sinai. That event, and the Ten Commandments delivered there, changed history forever.

Later, Jesus spent some time on the Mount of Olives.

2000+ years later, Martin Luther King took Moses’ revelation when he spoke of having been to the Mountaintop, when identifying his earthly mission with Moses’ mission, which had ended on Mt. Pisgah, where the Lord had given Moses a glimpse of the promised land, before taking him up to heaven. You can hear my song about Moses’ mountaintop experience and Dr. King’s mountaintop inspiration at Mountaintop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3hQNMr0A48

American Liberty

From a Boston church steeple to the red clay hills of Georgia, the cry for freedom rang out, nourished by the blood of innocent citizens and dedicated patriots. The clarion call for freedom rang out like a clanging bell, sounded loudly in the voices, the horns and the shots heard around the world. Who knew? Who knew that American independence would inspire a wave of Liberty around the world? From the bold declaring of Independence, agreed to and signed into reality by native patriots who assembled in Philadelphia, not yet knowing the bloody consequences of their rebellion? who knew?

Who knew that the principles stated in their Declaration, would ultimately inspire President Abraham Lincoln to issue an Emancipation of slaves, so that they could be citizens of these United States, and live free, and work for themselves and have freedom. Who knew that Martin Luther King’s dream of Liberty for all people would be actualized, slowly but surely, between the red clay hills of Georgia, the shores of Maine, the coffee klatches of Seattle, the gates of our southern border, and Pearl Harbor in the middle of the Pacific ocean? Who knew? Truth be told, cold hard facts. . . the Revolution was a bloody battle in which we finally ejected King George’s soldiers, and initiated a struggle for freedom that has inspired the whole world since those days in 1776.

Glass half-Full

Flowers to Seeds

I don’t know, but I been told that in the Beginning, the Creator of this world said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed. . .and so the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their own kind.

Later, the first man and woman screwed up, so the Creator ejected them from the garden, and set them out into the wide world to make it on their own. They procreated, making love. . . every time a man deposited his seed into his woman, or at least some times, his male seed would conjoin with her fertility and then, lo and behold, nine months later, a little baby would pop out. I first heard about this when I was in fourth grade, I began to understand some of these divine arrangements when a buddy of mine told me that the man puts the seed into his wife, or that she has the seed and he fertilizes it, something like that. . . and if his aim is good and she’s fertile, get this! another human will pop out a few months later! But getting back to that ancient genesis “seed”. . . generations of men and women populated the earth. Some of them were pretty good people; others, not so much. Eventually, the Creator noticed a fellow who was doing things right. He took Abraham aside and told them that in his “seed”, all generations of the earth be blessed, because Abraham obeyed the Creator’s rules for living a good life, and he taught his offspring the proper way of living. But you know the rest of story. A lot of things happened in this world. . . a lot of water under the bridge, so to speak, and millions of seeds were planted; hundreds of years passed. . .things were going along pretty well in Palestine, under Roman rule. Generation’s later, the Creator did a special impregnation, when (first time ever) a woman’s womb was fertilized without the man’s seed! The child was special, having a divine nature; He was destined to change the world, (you’ve probably heard of Him). . . by his resurrection after he was crucified for breaking a few rules, or something like that. His message—you’ve probably heard it—has been told from generation to generation ever since those ancient days. When Jesus was teaching men how to live, he told parables to illustrate the principles of the way the Creator does things. He said that the good news of His sacrificial work, was that He conquered death itself! But you gotta believe it to qualify. He said that the good news of his victory was like the news of His salvation. His conquest of death itself would be like seed that a farmer went out sew, and some of the seed landed in fertile ground, destined to bear fruit and more seed. Some seeds would sprout, and some would not. So keep that in mind whenever you plant your seed anywhere. It’s better to have a good crop than not to have a crop, thereby letting your offspring screw up. Train a child in the way he or she should go, and most likely the good news will bear fruit and your seed will be engendered in your progeny. Now because I am twice-born. . . once from my mother’s womb, and then again, spiritually, when I saw the Light of eternal Life that shines through the whole history of this world. And because, I am born again, this is what I thought of when I caught sight of the plant. . .

Glass half-Full