Photo of a wood waste basket I made in shop classin 1960
This late spring morning as I was making our bed, I began humming my high school rally song. “Fight for dear old Henry High” I called an old classmate and had a great conversation. We went deep which was a pleasure. The school has now been renamed and the involved people wanted to name it after Prince the rock star. It didn’t happen due to my old friend who intervened.
The memories meanwhile, flooded in and Ken and I talked a long while with my cell phone on the kitchen table, volume up high with the mic turned over the table edge. An illuminating chat and went far deeper than I thought it would. Similar eye surgeries, stacks of books at hand near our chairs in the living room type of connections.
The title of this column refers to the memories of my favorite author, C.S. Lewis. Preparatory schools with all the unpleasant clothing and such for him. It’s universal among us all. We remember the odd things about those 12 or 16 years. Everyone tried to overcome the isolation and angst that came with education in a public school. The clubs, the teams of athletics and the clicks that we were part of or not. Competition for high grades or outrageous behavior. I was a combination of geek and outrageous. Harley chopper and lecturing on Einstein’s theory of relativity in physics class. Trying to fit in somewhere.
It didn’t help that my mother was the assistant principals secretary either. A connection to power and influence. Plutonium residue upon my prescience. I had three friends and sold my motorcycle to one of them after high school. It would be worth five figures or so today. Hundred bucks and I needed money to get to the exciting town of San Diego. At least I took my briefcase and slide rule with to there.
A rather interesting story that is found in the archives of this website. Auto biography of Norm chapter 2 gives more detail of this adventure.
There is a loss in our communities that seems like a gain! The texting phenomenon has made writing letters obsolete and to many, cheaper and faster. Pen and Ink started to loose ground when the typewriter was introduced. The expense of ink wells, and ink stains was replaced with typewriter ribbons and skill.
I learned to touch type in the military and I got fast. Electric typewriters and carbon paper worked well. With top secret letters there were no carbon copies allowed. Now there is a new skill, typing on the screen of a cell phone. I have not embraced typing with both thumbs while holding a phone. I am fascinated and irritated at our civilization that has become hunched over while walking or standing, holding ‘the phone’ and writing and reading letters of sorts. Texting along with fun emojis and video clips. How about a three pound Bakelite model? I remember our bag phone and of course, my hand held Amateur radio. The ham radio did not need a phone number to talk to someone. A call sign worked but many times the beginning message was; CQ anyone there?
What I am getting around to is the act of writing and reading. Sitting down quietly while doing so.
I love to write and these columns are much easier to type with Word Press as it checks my spelling and syntax as I type. I have a short term memory issue, often real short time when I am physically writing a word and leave off a letter and skip on to the next one. Leaving off a vowel for instance. I can see my mistake and the software catches it and shows it to me. But that is a byline for this column, I revere actual writing with pen or pencil and using a stamp and an envelope to have USPS deliver my letter.
The major point is keeping in touch, not speedily but with intent beyond the rush of our current lives. “Rushing in not from the devil, it Is the devil” I believe that impatience is included. C.S. Lewis
I have sent a few letters lately to some friends. Some of which I have not seen nor heard from in decades. Several of them have never been answered although I know they were received because they were not returned with address unknown or such postal information. Phone calls work too but we are usually in a rush and an unexpected phone call from a friend of years past is surprising and hard to respond to if you are driving or setting down to lunch in a cafe. I like re-reading and even have a manila envelope for personal letters. It’s good. Phone numbers are passe. There used to be a book called a phone directory. They were hanging by a chain in phone booths. The is no cell phone directory hanging there.
Is there someone you send letters to and wonder if they will ever answer? There is also a very important type of letter that is spoken in private! These letters are referred to as prayer. It’s just me and the Lord alone and I tell Him how things are going and ask questions and have requests too. If my heart is calm and I am speaking in truth and love, I know my prayer is being heard. Peaceful and knowing and feeling His presence.
Often it seems my prayers have not been answered. The way I wanted them to be. Healing, provision for me or someone else. There is also the conversion to faith of someone that I have known a long time or just met. Evangelism. God hears these requests and stretches out his mighty arm and strong right hand and fulfills that prayer. Instantly in many ways we do not see and is always a perfect response from Him. Prayer is essential for all of us. Letters to the lover of our souls.
Someone obviously prayed for me to reach out to Christ, years ago, decades. It happened just the way it was supposed to happen. Why did it take so long? I have no idea and there is no answer until I read the book about me that no one this side of eternity can read. As C.S. Lewis says: “Every chapter is better than the last one you read”
“What is truth?” An old question that goes back to Mars Hill in Greece. Also the original question in the garden. “Did god really say?” Also the question that Pilate asked Jesus a few thousand years back. Jesus did not answer as the Truth was standing right in front of Pilate.
He knew this question of all philosophers as an educated citizen of Rome. Pilate spoke and wrote in Greek, Latin and Hebrew. He wrote the sign above Jesus on the cross. In those 3 languages.A letter posted for all to see throughout history. ‘Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews’ . Some of the locals disagreed and Pilate said what I have written stands.
The very gift of God will be all we need to keep sending those prayers/letters to him. I know so little of these things but I rely on that gift that gives me peace and confidence that my prayers are heard. Faith.
Do you ever wonder what happens when someone you know or someone you just met, says “I’ll pray about it” Do we follow through? I used to fudge it and forget the promise within a short period of time. Those four words were a dismissive phrase for me. Not anymore. I am growing up and taking responsibility for my life and the things I say and do. There is so little time left for me, and for you.
I was on an official Prayer team at a very large church that seats over 2000 people and we were told to stand in front of them just as the service had ended and with lanyards that said prayer, be available to anyone that came ahead. I loved it. Many times no one came, but the few that did are sharp in memory.
I had to be vetted and interviewed to be on that team and that is very correct to do so. You can surmise the interviews that took place. The teams prayed a lot and I learned how to do so from them.
I am now in production at that church, media, and I also love that. Presenting the songs to the room as messages of praise to the Lord right then and there. The professional musicians know that it is much more than having a good time or playing a good song. We all sing with them and we get to touch eternity.
It seems so long ago that the Re-birth occurred for me. An epiphany is a good description or a sudden awareness of being (that one sounds new age) This event was sudden but had many events and a ‘cocoon’ before it occurred. I wrote about it in the column, ‘Consuming Fire Fan into Flame”.
The back story was an escape from hibernation, a cocoon that I did not see nor notice. I was swaddled up comfy in my life of sorts before the re-birth. You have read some of those stories as well. They are all true. There is one thing about a cocoon that is necessary, growth and strength acquisition. It is common and I saw one last spring, it was hanging beneath a milk weed leaf. A place where a Monarch butterfly was taking shape.
Dangling from that leaf, built by a worm that crawled up and used it’s spit to anchor itself. It spun the chrysalis (another name for cocoon) somehow. It’s called metamorphosis and the study can be described as such. A good word would be a scientific focused study on the metamorphic process’? One such study answered the question: “Is it painful for the butterfly?” Through extensive electric wave analysis on an oscilloscope, it was determined that it was not painful. Go ahead and chuckle at that one.
The same folks that track the emotions of carrots that know you are coming to yank it out of the ground. I don’t even want to know what that would see in me. More later on that. my growth was very painful but also necessary. You don’t need an oscilloscope to see that.
To get on with the epiphany I experienced, just thinking about that monarch’s life was stunning enough.
Why was it designed that way? And the pivotal evidence seen, was the gold ring around the very top of the chrysalis. Small gold dots, perfectly spaced and a very strong message indeed is there, if we choose to look at it.
First off, what do we usually associate with gold rings? Marriage and crowns for honor. A king or a Queen. Soon enough, the chrysalis splits open and the Monarch begins to emerge. Can you even imagine what process this is? The wings fully developed and folded up like a plane in the hanger of an aircraft carrier, just waiting for the freedom of flight.
How does this miracle of transformation apply to us? I have found myself just trying out those wings I was given not too long ago. Wings that not only speak freedom but purpose and direction. A flight path, a sudden internal gyro that stabilizes my glide path or flapping through this short life I have been given. It seems short when many decades cruise by with the longing for something more.
We have been built and created for something more. We hunger for it. We do everything in our power and wisdom to live as long as possible, but it is only vanity to grasp the wind. As we grasp at the wind, the astonishing thing is an answer to that hunger for more. A meaning and purpose and beauty that we, in our chrysalis have been waiting for. Eternity to wear that gold crown and hang out with the creator of all and gaze upon His glorious splendor as he grasps us and gives us the crown, as we gaze upon the beauty of real treasure, Him.
The story and promise of crowned beauty beyond description. If we wish this transformation with all our heart, soul, and spirit, the treasure will be ours forever. It’s pretty good. Norm aka Jack Gator
.. After the dust- bowl town with the Angel and the woodruff key, we were on Route 66 and westward bound. Gas was cheap back then our slim wallets still had enough to get to ‘the city’ in California.
The bar up ahead looked promising after all that desert in Nevada. It appeared to have just been dropped into place. A small parking lot with two cars, one of them with California plates. There was literally, nothing visible from horizon to horizon. Just the endless highway. A few dust devils and actual sagebrush.
Out of the saddles and into the bar we strode, awkwardly as riding can do things to your body that doesn’t relate to standing and walking. It’s just the odd feeling from all that vibration that your hands are on opposite arms. Weird. Akin to my illusions at sea when land would not be visible. After a few weeks in the ‘middle’ if the ocean, it seems the ship is standing still and the water is flowing by!
Any way, most motorcycle riders get the upside down hands thing after 100 miles or so, no one talks about it. Our bikes were a little rougher on the road than today’s huge highway cruisers. Bruce’s BMW was a little smoother than the Indian Tomahawk/Enfield. I shudder even now thinking how it would have been on the 600cc Matchless single.
So after we shook off the muscle memories and went in, the bar had two women patrons and the barkeep. The two women were older and looked at those two young men like coyotes gazing upon a nice jack rabbit nearby. Smiles and almost instantly, an offer to cool down with a few cold ones. ‘Sure’! After a few (the women were drinking hard stuff) it was revealed that one of them was a California Senator and the other woman was the Senator’s aide.
Betty Fiorina was the Senators name, I never forgot it. It pops up now and then in the news and in my mind.
Lots of laughs and some mild flirtation ensued and it was time for the gals to hop into their Buick convertible and us to kick start the bikes and weave down the highway. Blood alcohol content, who cares? Not a car in sight and road hazards were an occasional sign and a few lizards or ruckchucks. 1. If you noticed, motorcycles now do not have kick starters. You have seen them in movies where you heave your body up in the saddle and push hard on the way down onto a pedal on the right side of the machine. It usually started on one kick.
Class act meets Brando and Lee Marvin and no one knew what to do except drink and laugh. Much later, a decade or two, I caught a name on some senate bill and it’s the same last name of the Senator they met. Family business. There was a photo and she looked very trim and self assured. Splitting image of mom.
Onward to Northern California and the back entrance to Berkeley on Shasta Road. Bruce was confident, I was just stunned. The place we wheeled up to had several chimneys, a tile roof and a pretty good view of the San Francisco bay . More class and style than either of us had ever experienced.
An old friend of Bruce’s, Charlie Jirousek, lived there with about six other people. He was a luthier and built guitars out of Brazilian Rosewood. So he was broke too. He also had a massive Malamute, North, that shed hair at a bodacious rate. A month later, Charlie covered the C.F. Martin logo on the tuning head with one of his, a mother of pearl arrow. His guitar business was called ‘Arrowhead’ I was concerned that even at this time, the Martin logo would encourage theft. It works. To this day musicians that hear of play it remark on it’s tone and beauty. “what is it?” I tell them to look inside the sound hole. Martin D-28.
Charlie had a big sack full of the hair and stated someday he would make a shirt out of it. 4 decades went by until the shirt appeared. It had an odd smell and dogs seemed attracted to Charlie. So The three of them spent a lot of time around the main living room fireplace playing guitars and eating peanut butter from Charlie’s jar. A half gallon jar. White bread used now and then. It was enjoyable for me to meet another person as pleasant and eccentric as we were.
To this day, I still enjoy a peanut butter sandwich with heavy butter on both slabs of bread. Add the thick crunchy style peanut butter. Those sandwich’s were free and the music was excellent and heart felt. A lot of joy around that fireplace.
We all knew what our lives were like as we played the same music. Leadbelly, Blind Blake, Willy McDowell. It’s called country blues music. There was one tune, Old Country Rock that just hit the spot. We played it a lot. It was pretty good. Norman Peterson / Jack Gator
1. Ruckchuck . An animal nearby in the weeds that makes a lot of noise. Scared away by an aluminum cooking pot swinging in front of our headlamps.
The trip was instantly planned with my new friend Bruce, just back from ‘Nam’ and anxious for safer adventures. I was fairly fresh from overseas as well, with Comservron 6 and several tours in the Mediterranean and the six day war with Russia and Egypt. We were on the Israeli side. It was dicey over there too. Lot’s of military muscle being deployed. Older Navy people know the nomenclature. It seemed our nation was muddled up in several wars. Fubar was the term. Bruce and I knew the score, or we thought we did. I was better off at sea. Bruce had just recovered from the Jungle and I had just recovered from a shipmate trying to kill me. We were both suffering from PTSD and it felt so good to just go on our own. It was the summer of love and we needed some of that whatever it was, it sounded good to us.
Older motorcycles and younger riders seemed just the solution of affordable transportation.
We had an easy itinerary: Route 66 to California. Just head south and take a right. Back in the days of paper maps and freedom to improvise and walk the line between a long trip and danger. I sold my Austin Healey Sprite and Bruce had his Chevy Bel-Aire to trade for the bikes. I was offered a Matchless 500 single cylinder. I chose an Indian-Enfield 500 twin instead. Bruce got a BMW 500. The offer to me was a Matchless single cylinder. I declined that one for a long trip. It was like riding a vibrating pogo stick.
Off they went, both bikes with ‘sissy bars’ and their guitars strapped on behind us upright and some luggage and a camping tent. Money and a hunger for vistas unseen.
Good weather and full tanks and some spare parts, we left to head south first and catch 66 down by the Oklahoma panhandle. Camping was first choice and other than that, we didn’t have a clue about what was ahead. Just in our early twenties and now free to make our own travel choices.
Bruce had made some friends when he got back from China Beach. Those friends of his lived in ‘the city’ out west and that was good enough a destination as any. Money was tight. First adventure was in Omaha. Somehow we met a group of hippies, and were embraced as sojourners to the headquarters of the love movement; San Francisco.
The hippies took us to their home, right across the street from the big race track, Aksarben, (that odd name is Nebraska backwards). Beds available and very starry eyed girls seemed a pretty good place to stop over. Schedule? There wasn’t any and that allowed leeway. Waking up the next morning, both of us were greeted with a breakfast treat of a small pill. Guaranteed to be an interesting experience. The only thing I remember was being taken to Arby’s and trying to order food. The colorful mushrooms growing out of the counter mans chef’s hat got in the way of comprehending things. ‘Have you ever been experienced?’ went the song of the times. A quick goodbye and we were back on the road for adventures that seemed to be working out pretty good, so far.
On down the road to Kansas and an uneventful ride until we stopped in Liberal. Foolishly, but with great enjoyment, we gave rides to more starry eyed and bored young girls on our bikes; exotic transportation. the young men on the sidewalk gave squinty eyed stares, the Clint Eastwood trouble for you look. We thought as veterans of two different wars, we deserved good attentions from everyone. We were not wearing our old uniforms.
It was great fun until the town’s police chief approached us and asked if we would like to stay overnight in the town jail! At first thought we wondered what we did wrong that would incur incarceration. The chief stated: “ It would be safer in my jail for you both.”
The doors to the cells only open one way and we declined the offer. that single officer in town told them: “Them boys is a comin’ for you tonight at your camp site”. “Oh. Well, we’ll take our chances chief , thanks for the offer.” was our reply.
The local young toughs came after them later that night.. (to be continued in Motorcycle pilgrimage series)
As it is, so shall it always be. Music, an indescribable and fleeting thing. The string is plucked, the drum resonates, the bowed instrument plays one note that blesses the fleeting sound. One second it is there. An eternal second, there is no time involved and the resonance goes into eternity and the joy flows abounding within the players and listeners.
There are many things that liken to music, draftsmanship or painting the light. Again, the romance of the stunning scene to the love of creating the painting. Both the musician and the painter are vulnerable to elevation of self. We do not realize the breaking of our admiration of our talents and contributing one or two notes or a splash of sienna releases real joy and appreciative laughter of the hearing and seeing the Master of all of it.
Images of musicians with the anticipated music played on perfect instruments abound. Especially for ones that have felt the joy and dance with a word sung or a set of notes played. An image from Lewis: “If one could just read the score of that heavenly music, they would never be ill nor grow old.”
So many years, so many bands and sitting in with other bands. I was consumed with applause. For me. A brief smile from a waltzing couple as they swirled past the stage as I played Faded Love is still remembered. The pride of even placing in a fiddle contest would make me proud. Of myself. I am not as fast these days (As I edit this I am 80 years old) and actually, that helps. There were so many instrumentalists in my life and the attaining of blazing speed with difficult passages was the goal and passion of so many. Just listen to bluegrass sometime. The song is over before you can even remember the words. Nice music, don’t misinterpret my words here. Nice music and really nice people play bluegrass. There were, unfortunately, some artists that would overplay and smirk at my waltz’ or jazz. That is OK now, I know who was guiding my music in that instantaneous beauty.
Emulating Bob Wills and his stunningly beautiful waltz’ was my goal. I tried the classic Orange Blossom Special when playing the bar circuit. I would not play it until the third set when the patrons were drunk enough to enjoy my fiddling of that song. I did OK with it, even the double stop slides, but it was not brilliant as the original. Still, it brought hoops and yells and that satisfied my need of acceptance.
I went to playing in the church..not A church, but THE church was my now my wish. A little mandolin to fill in the missing notes that I hear in spirit. The mandolin is referred to as the violin’s ‘walking stick’. (The tuning is the same as the violin) my last worship leader mentioned when the really high notes of vibrato ring out, it made him laugh inside. Good description of joy in worship.
Third position on the mandolin is a LOT easier than on the fiddle. It has frets. Those incredible stratospheric violin passages are pretty swell if your fingers are doing OK and you spend every day in the practice room. Playing Since a person was young child helps. I am in awe and joy when I hear those players. I wonder what they are thinking and feeling during those concertos.
So I needed applause to feel wanted and accepted. Now there is joy in worship heard or played when everything makes a brief tapestry of beauty. Offered to Jesus with love and adoration. It’s the only thing that goes to another plane of experience for me now.
As it is, so shall it always be. Music, an indescribable and fleeting thing. The string is plucked, the drum resonates, the bowed instrument plays one note that blesses the fleeting sound. One second it is there. An eternal second, there is no time involved and the resonance goes into eternity and the joy flows abounding within the players and listeners. Nevertheless, beware!
” Every poet, musician and artist, but for grace, are drawn away from the love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling, till, down in deep hell, they cannot be interested in God at all, but only what they say about Him” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
Applause reflects how others in the room feel that too. It’s heart felt. The thing is, that I now know they are really applauding the beauty revealed of Jesus, the creator of worship music hearts and all things. It’s pretty good. Playing or listening, it’s all the same thrill of eternal music on that sea of flaming glass.
We were blessed indeed by grace to avoid the love of the telling when my family worshiped for four years alone in a house of prayer in a storefront on main street in our local town. We had all the sound system stuff and a drum cage too. There were chairs for anyone who wished to be there, but most of the time we were alone. It fostered intimacy with our Lord. When we left after the building was sold, we had a last set that lasted for hours and started it at 7:20 in the evening. After an obvious finishing song, we looked at the clock facing us and it was 7:20.
It was getting dicey and worrisome for everyone. The quarantine was working somewhat, but the death toll was still climbing everywhere. The news-room personalities were beginning to visibly sweat, and it wasn’t the stage lighting. Cameras were fixed and it was obvious there was only one camera and no director for various shots and video inserts. Just one camera, and no one behind it. The ‘personality’ with a rumpled suit was reading off paper in front of him (no prompter) and the weather didn’t have any green-screen and the prognostication was very vague.
Grocery stores had empty shelves, but that was all right because the parking lots were empty too. Gasoline was down to 75 cents but no one was buying except medical and military. Pleasant driving if you wanted to risk it. Roadblocks and interstate driving enforced with the national guard. No one moved unless you have paperwork displayed on the plates, fore and aft. The bridges were secured.
The phones still worked and the power was pretty good. Amazingly, there were still areas where the fiber carried the internet but the load on that pipeline was enormous. Many reliable and local updates on where latest food and scavengers were moving and advice on security measures. Very little panic. Neighborhoods and townships were unifying and assistance grew within them.
Medical triage and field medic people were in big demand and local connections worked pretty well. After the alerts where the looters were predicted, these honorable people were available to friend and foe alike. The locals began to see something they had not seen before. Compassion and a love for their fellow man, almost impossible to understand. When asked about this, the the medics and doctors would smile and reply with an understandable Gospel. Before it all, the immediate response to a faith message was “great, they’re going to tell me how I can be just like them if only I follow the rules” Now there was serious response to the joy found in listening to the Lord.
There was dialogue and questions. Then we began to reveal how much we thought and felt about this similar ‘bad’ behavior in ourselves. Certainly we were not saints but somehow happy and …well, free. No rules given, just paying attention to the hunger for human contact everyone was experiencing.
The somewhat simple explanation from these medical volunteers was easily understood. Many times there was a demand to have them visit again if possible. It was was new. There were no suits and ties, endorsement of connections. No tracts or phony glad handing. Real missionaries. The calmness and strength of these volunteers was what everyone needed. The usual isolation and fear of each other was being replaced with community and trust. After a short while, safe housing was set up for the desperate roaming families and civilization started to come back to stay. There was no doubt that Jesus had done a miracle and there was great hope and strength spreading throughout the land.
I think good preachers should be like bad kids. They ought to be naughty enough to tiptoe up on dozing congregations, steal their bottles of religion pills, and morality pills, and flush them all down the drain. The church, by and large, has drugged itself into thinking that proper human behavior is the key to its relationship to God. What preachers need to do is force it to go cold turkey with nothing but the word of the cross—and then be brave enough to stick around while it goes through the inevitable withdrawal symptoms. … Robert Farrar Capon (1925-2013),
Genuine controversy, fair cut and thrust before a common audience, has become in our special epoch very rare. For the sincere conversationalist is above all things a good listener. The really burning enthusiast never interrupts; he listens to the enemy’s arguments as eagerly as a spy would listen to the enemy’s arrangements. If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will find that no medium is admitted between violence and evasion. You will have no answer except slandering or silence. …G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936),
Was there a moment known only to God, when all the stars held their breath, when the galaxies paused in their dance for a fraction of a second, and the Word, who had called it all into being, went with all his love into the womb of a young girl, and the universe started to breathe again, and the ancient harmonies resumed their song, and the angels clapped for joy?
…Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007)
O be calm and quiet all by yourself is hardly the same as sleeping. In fact, it means being fully awake and following with close attention every move going on inside you. It involves a self-discipline where the urge to get up and go is recognized as a temptation to look elsewhere for what is really close at hand. It is the freedom to stroll in your own yard, to rake up the leaves and clear the paths so you can easily find your way.
…Henri J. M. Nouwen (1932-1996)
Here is my examination at the beginning of Advent, at the beginning of a new year. Lack of charity, criticism of superiors, of neighbors, of friends and enemies. Idle talk, impatience, lack of self-control and mortification towards self, and of love towards others. Pride and presumption. (It is good to have visitors – one’s faults stand out in the company of others.) Self-will, desire not to be corrected, to have one’s own way. The desire in turn to correct others, impatience in thought and speech.The remedy is recollection and silence Dorothy Day (1897-1980),
Everything is made to center upon the initial act of “accepting” Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him we need no more seek Him. This is set before us as the last word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bible-taught Christian ever believed otherwise.. A. W. Tozer (1879-1963)
It must be admitted that a few clergymen glory in the contrast between their status and that of ordinary Christians. They accept obeisance as a natural right; they monopolize public praying; they learn how to keep themselves in the limelight. There is something about the pastoral office which makes the temptation to egocentricity especially powerful. This is partly because the successful preacher is regularly praised to his face. His mood seems a far cry from that of Christ when He girded Himself with a towel and washed the feet of His followers.
It was 80 years ago when the City of Hiroshima was destroyed. It was exactly my first birthday. August 6th 1945. I just saw a friend holding his one year old child Sunday and him toddling off after he reached for my hand. D day was exactly two months before I was born, June 6th 1944. Those things got me to thinking about my life and betrayal by the world. It led to war and destruction and the loss of millions of lives. Lust and greed fueling it.
As many of us, I was betrayed. My best friend in the Navy did so. My first love and fiance left me secretly. The girl I was in love with when I lived on the West Bank had a sexual liaison while we were staying with my father in California. Dad was betrayed by my mother. When my girl visited an ‘old friend’ while we were at my Dad’s, she slept with that friend. My dad’s response when she returned late that night was: “they all do that” It got to be normal life for me.
I grew wary and found it impossible to get involved with anyone, especially women. I never knew why really, as many of us do, we just think these sorts of things are normal life. There are details of my life about these things that I do not reveal, they are too personal and harsh. Even for this writing to the public and my family. Just like the world’s history. I will some day.
Then today, while I was reading about WWII and all of these thoughts were prancing about in my mind, The sun came through the building storm clouds. It shone right on my face as I sat in the living room with a history book in my lap. I heard: “ I was betrayed by my friend too, and I know exactly what you have been through” Comforted and even cradled I was overwhelmed. “I will never betray nor forsake you” Words from the creator of everything.
The last time I was betrayed was the newspaper Editor that printed these sorts of things I write. Too much Jesus and we will have to let you go he said. I am comforted and affirmed now when I remember my response: “Will you then allow me a final column to tell my readers I can’t write a column every week, that it’s a burden”? It was printed and I did not betray him and the owner of the paper. It was a lie of course, but it seemed like the decent thing to do. After all, they would not print the truth of the matter.
The friend that sold me out for his addiction in the navy converted to faith in our savior Jesus shortly after I visited him on his dead bed in Maryland. I was permitted to see him pass into Eternity on the exact time he died thousands of miles away. He told me as he disappeared , “It’s better than you said!” It was a turning point in my life to say the least of it. His wife was comforted as I spoke with her later that day.
There is no room to prevaricate about the state of the world now, it is filled with anger and betrayal and is not surprising to me. The words I heard when that glow of the Son warmed my face this morning are timeless and eternal truth. I am loved and held forever. Norm Peterson “the Gator”
How do you teach a method of connection? What do we connect with? Or who do we connect with? The biggest question for me what is connection? The topic just ‘happened’ to come up in one of the myriad books that I leave around the house. You know, or are, one of those people that read when eating, before sleeping, when waiting for those two things. Skimming, flipping through chapters, some of the pages dog-eared in a good place to start again.
So, the topic of connection was in one of those scattered piles throughout the house and it stopped a thought train with screeching brakes and a trail of sparks on the tracks of otherwise placid reading. Connection. Why would I want to connect with someone I have never seen, but just read about? A connection in a dream about Hemingway I just had? Why try to connect with a great author that has left the world decades ago? There is a way to connect with him by reading his writing and taking notes. Was the dream a connection with my memory, one which I have been missing or ignoring for decades? The dream seemed to be from my best friend who told me important things.
It was a vivid dream. I was in the big city and drove by a splendid home that triggered a memory of connection. I went up the sidewalk to the familiar home and was welcomed in by several people that knew me. The memory of living across the street and being mentored by Hemingway when I was a boy flooded in. The books from the fabulous library loaned, hours sitting with ‘Papa’ and being told, someday I would be writing truth with skill to make images with words. Stories of adventure. The dream ended with one of the daughters telling me it was so good to see him again and would I like to stay for a while?
There was a loud noise that sounded like explosions and I was awoken suddenly with a strong wish to remember the dream by writing it down. At four in the morning. (The sound sounded like the summer people having fun blowing things up.) It was only the family dog.
It seemed the dream was a message from my self. Deep in rem sleep, dredging up ‘connections’ that surfaced as reality sleeping dormant. Or was the dream a connection with someone else that had spoken it? I write about life, but to develop a story like this one was ego and wish palpable. Still remembering the dream knew what the connection was and with who.
It was encouragement and confirmation from the greatest authors ever known. “Keep writing, stay steady and tell the truth . Don’t try and make your writing original, write the truth and and write the story as best you can and originality will come forth.” 1.
Indeed, the question of ‘what is truth’ was asked centuries ago and the answer was silence. The truth of that life was obvious and the words written about that life still capture and hold us. When truth is revealed, it is a beauty sought.
Sometimes only five words can take your breath away and be remembered forever. Connection. As coming awake again from the dream of life. The reason, the hope, the answer to so many questions. The book that can be read again and again that speaks and shakes our inner man with it’s truth. A book worth dreams awake or asleep. Dreams of destiny and worth.
I was stopped on the sidewalk soon after this column was printed and directly asked; “did you ever live in Spain where Earnest lived?” I answered yes and he furrowed his brow and walked away. I did not mention that when I lived in Spain I was in prison for six months for evading a murderer and running from the military police. It affirmed the column’s legitimacy for that man. It was fun to tell that truth, I left off the prison details.
As Johnny Cash said: “Sooner or later, everyone comes back to Jesus. The Bible, It’s pretty good.
Norm Peterson / Jack Gator 1. C.S. Lewis The Great Divorce
Jack gators grace notes 