Roger Barbee

By Roger Barbee

On January 20, 2011, Reynolds Price died from complications of a heart attack. He was 77.

In April 1997 Price received a letter from Jim Fox who had read Price’s memoir, A Whole New Life, his story of the 1984 diagnosis of spinal cord cancer, which caused paralysis of his legs, placing him in a wheelchair. Jim Fox, a young medical student who experienced his own cancer diagnosis, read the memoir, and asked Price, “Does God exist, and does he care?” Their correspondence was brief because Fox died soon after, but Price’s answer to him was published as Letter to a Man in the Fire.

            In August of 2001 I suffered an injury that, like Price, caused paralysis of my legs. During my rehab I experienced a myriad of emotions and a deep sense of loss. I suffered, but received great care from  the hospital staff, family, and friends. But, I had so much to learn at the age of 55: Incontinence. How to manage the purple wheelchair. Dependency for many matters. The loss of long, morning runs with Jay and Caleb. Loss loomed and frightened me. However, one night I woke to a warm, calming light that appeared at my face and out of it a sweet, kind voice told me not to worry, that everything would be okay.

            In his answer to Fox, Price writes: “Starting on a warm afternoon in the summer of 1939, …I’ve experienced moments of sustained calm awareness that subsequent questioning has never discounted. Those moments, which recurred at unpredictable and widely space intervals till some thirteen years ago, still seem to me undeniable manifestations of the Creator’s benign or patiently watchful interest in particular stretches of my life, though perhaps not all of it.”

            The light and voice was not, I knew, a dream. It was real, but I kept my experience close, and only shared it with Reynolds Price in a phone call. His response was, “Why, Roger, you had a visitation.” Shortly after our conversation, I received a copy of Letters in which Price had inscribed, “Persist, my friend.”

            Price– the North Carolina novelist, poet, scholar of Milton, teacher at Duke, Rhodes Scholar, cancer victim, had used the best word, a simple verb that expressed the perfect attitude that only a good writer who was surviving a cancer, could. His choice of persist came out of his struggle with cancer,  but also out of his experiences like that of the summer day in 1939.

            Price, a student of religions, especially the Gospels, draws on literature, several religions and beliefs, and his own faith to answer Jim Fox’s question concerning God and His involvement in our lives. Yet, and perhaps of my own experience from the fall of 2001, I return over and over to Price’s words,” I’ve experienced moments of sustained calm awareness that subsequent questioning has never discounted….”

            That is, for me, a complete explanation of God’s presence in our lives. If we believe and listen we will persist.

By Roger Barbee

Twenty years ago this morning I awoke in an ICU ward in Fairfax Hospital. The night before I had had two nineteen-inch titanium rods screwed to my back because that afternoon a building I was taking down collapsed– pinning me beneath it. My broken back had to be stabilized, thus the rods.

I remember a little of  that morning: Seeing through the fog of morphine a friend who had flown on a red eye from California to see me; The ICU nurse’s long, black, curly hair that fell over my face when she leaned in to ask me a question; My body still carrying the dust and dirt from the collapsed building; My family huddled in fear and worry; But not much more. Snippets in memory that may or may not be accurate run together with what I know to be true. But what I know to be absolute is that that morning and many after it held doubt and fear and dread until I, as Mary Oliver writes, realized.

Like the narrator in her poem, The Journey, I realized one morning or at one moment or with a particular encounter that it was time—time for me to expel all the bad that I had allowed to enter into my life.  I realized that at times during those four years, my dark time, I ignored what I knew to be the truth and allowed the voices to continue tugging at “my ankles.” But as Oliver writes, “One day you finally knew/what you had to do, and began,…” And like most beginnings, mine was full of slow progress, but “Little by little” I improved, and I eventually left the “Old man” that Paul writes about behind. But like all journeys, mine was not just me placing a foot in front of another. I had begun journeying, but I was not walking alone.

After I set aside the leeches in my life, I was able to reckon myself and take an honest sounding. This sounds selfish, but when you find yourself so miserable that the only option seems to be to continue your denial or to admit that you have been at the bottom of a dark hole, digging and digging, all the while wondering why you cannot escape and see the sunlight and feel its warmth, it is then that you set aside the shovel those takers had given you and deeply consider where you are.  Finally able to lean the shovel against the hole’s side,   I began to stop going down and began to move up, ever so slowly. It was on that going upward that I saw my true friends and learned to allow them to help me.

One of the best advantages of any journey is the people you will encounter. You will meet them in unlikely places and in unusual circumstances. Because your journey is one of renewal, you will move slowly, so you will see and hear more. While your journey may not be one of steps,  you will still discover that your frantic pace to satisfy others has ceased, and you now see and hear what you had not experienced before. The ground you are traveling over becomes a sharing place for you to hear the stories of others, to smell the air of an autumn day, to feel the sun’s warmth through a  window, to hear a child’s laughter, and more. You are alive.

My journey continues because of family and friends. While I could list all of them, there is no need to because they each know what they did to help me as I finally leaned the shovel against the hole’s wall. The hole, by the  way, is still there, however, and it will never go away. It is a reminder of life’s danger, but I have learned to accept its existence and walk around it.

When measured in years, twenty is many. But when measured as a journey, it is short. Therefore, wherever you are on your journey, enjoy each step that brings more people to share it.  They are the balm for your sore and tired feet.

By Roger Barbee

A Bush, Bumblebees, and a Butterfly

Next to one side of our screen porch is an abelia bush. Now in early August, it is covered with small, white nectar producing blossoms, so each morning the hum of bumblebee wings bathes the summer air as they move from bloom to bloom for the bush’s sweet juice of life. It is a morning music that I have come to anticipate during these past days; however, earlier this week a visitor graced the bush in its search for some of the same life-giving nectar: An eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly with its full yellowed wings trimmed in black with a bit of blue, joined the bees in the nectar dance of the abelia. The splash of blue identifies this particular swallowtail as a female.

The swallowtail is a large butterfly and  a regular summer visitor to the Lake Norman area. Its bright yellow wings dazzle in the morning calm as it dances from bloom to bloom, and because of its size, the swallowtail appears too large to light on one of the delicate, white blossoms. But despite the size difference, the swallowtail perches over and over onto different blooms–in a ballet developed by a force stronger than any we know of, or any we can comprehend.

I read somewhere that a bumblebee, based on aerodynamics, cannot fly.  According to physics, it is too heavy and round in relation to its wing size to fly. As I watch and hear the flying bumblebees at the abelia bush, I wonder if the bumblebees know that they cannot fly.  But they have other things to consider each morning, and the rapid movement rate of their wings adds a soft hum to the morning.

The swallowtail, like the bumblebees, is an amazing animal. Its life cycle began just weeks before as a small, round egg on a leaf. Going through metamorphosis of four stages, this beautiful female swallowtail that I watch is the result of a process scientist do not yet fully understand. But I do not need to understand how the butterfly came to be any more than I need to understand the Milky Way in order to appreciate the beauty of both. In his poem, When I Heard The Learn’d Astronomer, Walt Whitman tells of having attended a lecture where he saw all the charts and proofs and heard all the explanations, but upon leaving the lecture, he “Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.”

Explanations and proofs are of value and are even necessary at times. However, each morning watching the insects fluttering about the abelia bush, I am filled with amazement that such delicate animals and small, white blossoms serve such a vital role in the world. And here it is each morning, a free show if I slow down to see it–a dance of life that gives new life for the cycles of life on our “small blue dot.”

By Roger Barbee

When former national security adviser Michael Flynn was presented with an AR-15 assault rifle, he responded, “Maybe I’ll find somebody in Washington, D.C.” The crowd laughed, whistled, and cheered. The presentation took place in the Church of Glad Tidings in Yuba City, California, which hosted Flynn on July 16. Dave Bryan, a pastor at the church, led the service.

On Sunday, July 25,  Gary Locke told his flock during his sermon in Global Vision Bible Church in Mount Juliet, Tennessee., about 20 miles east of downtown Nashville, that if “You start showing up [with] all these masks and all this nonsense, I will ask you to leave,”  His statement was followed by cheers and applause. “I am not playing these Democrat games up in this church,” he added.

 I thought of these two recent actions that took place during Sunday services as I was reading Samuel S. Hill, Jr,’s  seminal book, Southern Churches in Crisis.  Dr. Hill writes that “sect-type forms of Christianity are meant to be minority movements (his italics), both within the larger Christian realm and within human societies.”  As thought provoking as this quotation is, I think his note to this statement more powerful. Dr. Hill’s note quotes Pastor John O. Mellin: “More harm has been done to the church and the gospel by a majority approach to life than anything else. We are a minority, a mustard seed, a leaven, a saltiness which flavors the whole—not because we take over the city but because it takes over us.”

Now you may not agree with either Hill or Mellin, but I think they both raise a worthy question for all Christ followers: When are we most effective as Christ followers? As I ponder that question, I think of the 1^st Century Christians and their struggles. Not only did they have the Romans to contend with, but they also had internal disputes, such as circumcision.  Their story and struggle can seem relatively easy as read from the comfort of 2021, but it was a chosen life rife with danger. But, as we know, their struggles and suffering led to our sanctification.

It is when I read accounts of such church actions as I mentioned above that I fear for some of us as having become too large and too worldly. It seems to me that such acts as presenting a convicted felon with an assault rifle (followed by cheers) or telling a congregation that anyone wearing a mask will  be asked to leave the church go directly against our Christian belief. Is our mission  such that we must become that immersed in our culture? Can we be effective Christ followers when we exhibit such behavior and speak such words?

Growth for any church is great, but if it grows too much it may have to face the danger of its own power. Bigger means more money and more people who agree with each other so deeply they will not hear the voice of a prophet. As Dr. Hill writes “Self-fixation can lead only to frustration, irrelevance, and disobedience.”  A church that has grown too much and is too big may take on non-Biblical challenges becoming frustrated with its lack of influence in its culture. A church like this will try harder to influence change, become so caught up in its non-Biblical charge that it is viewed as irrelevant by it surrounding culture and then becomes desperate and even disobedient to God’s will.  A church such as this will eventually die as its members suffer frustration with its lack of success, leaving one more empty church building to be sold.

We Christ followers are told by John and Paul “to be in the world but not of the world.” If we Christ followers heed those words and view ourselves as a bit of leaven for the large loaf, we will be more successful in our  joyous task.

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By Roger Barbee

A road trip to the Sandhills of South Carolina is required. Unlike most requirements, this one is given freely because of the summer days I spent with Aunt Lynn and her husband Uncle Gene when I was a young boy. 

The year 1928 was not the best of times to be born, but Aunt Lynn’s parents and nine children managed through the Great Depression, even using it like a fire to temper their strength and resolve. She grew and married a local boy, Eugene Burch. They, too, farmed– cotton, corn, soy beans, corn, timber, wheat, and what ever else would bring them a profit. They also had chicken houses and that is how I experienced some wonderful summer days as their egg gatherer, cleaner, grader, and packer. But most of all, I remember those summer days as ones where I was given the responsible for me: The accountability of how I performed my egg duties, how I chopped my two rows of cotton as Uncle Gene chopped his four, and how I managed the other given tasks that, when done correctly, contributed to the farm’s success.

Aunt Lynn allowed me to grow during those hot summer days by giving me freedom that her older sister, my mother, could not. She shepherded me so that any decision I made seemingly was mine, but they were mostly hers. Her stern hand guided me as she fed me great meals that never seemed to lack anything a young boy wanted.

But every great summer day ended, and a ride for me with some local farmers who worked the 2^nd shift in Plant 1, Cannon Mills, was found, and I returned home: A boy rich with memories of many achievements and adventures on a small, Sandhill farm.

By Roger Barbee

            Sometime last week I first noticed the seasonal changes on the mountain. Working in the raised flower garden, I went to the shop for some pruning shears and on the way back, I glanced to the saddle just south of Edinburg Gap. Yep, there was a light touch of yellow, gold, and specks of red. Since that day last week, the change has spread along the ridge, causing the mountain to take on an array of colors like those of an artist’s palette.

            However, before the cold and snow of another winter arrives,  we have weeks of sharp, vibrant colors to enjoy. Not only have leaves begun to turn on the ridge of the mountain, but I have seen some sugar maple leaves turning.  It is indeed a magical season that seems to have arrived unannounced, but I know that lack of awareness  is about me and not the seasonal cycle. Yet, we all are often taken aback by how quickly the change of seasons happens. On the last day of September, while working on a doll house in the shop, I opened the large doors that face the mountain so I could see the same saddle from last week.  I glanced up often to marvel at  how the colors had increased. Not only had the ridge taken on more color, but also the base shone with a dull orange tinge that announced the coming change. Sanding and painting the intricate parts of the doll house, I thought how as this seasonal change has come  many of us in the valley have continued on with our daily lives—the joys, the sorrows, the squabbles, and the mundane, without taking heed of the dramatic change happening on the mountain and around us. Then I thought of Sadie and her words to Mary Ann, my wife.

                        When Mary Ann and I first met, one of the first people in her life about whom she told me was her long-time friend, Sadie, who now lives in Gettysburg. Attending the same church, Sadie and Mary Ann had shared much in their lives until Sadie was called to counsel violent, male prisoners in the Pennsylvania state system. Over the years of her prison counseling, Sadie came to realize that, until she became an ordained minister, she would be limited by the restraints of the state prison system. So, this  spunky lady in her late fifties enrolled in the Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg so that she could do more for “her” violent prisoners. After years of hearing about her and her work in the prisons with the men that she said had been forgotten, I was finally going to meet her.

                        Sadie and Mike, her husband, invited family and friends to her ordination. It was a lovely service in an old Lutheran Church near Gettysburg. However, what struck me was how much energy flowed from the small frame of Sadie. Like many celebrations, her ordination was over a weekend, but her glass-framed, smiling face seemed to be in all places with all her family and friends. With her ordination, her prison outreach expanded, and we began regular trips to Gettysburg to race the local marathon, see the historical sights, and share time with Sadie and Mike.

                        Sometimes we would share time with both, but on occasion  Mike would be out of town, so we had Sadie to ourselves. She showed us interesting, seemingly unknown parts of her hometown, she shared with us her work in the prison system, and her work as an assistant pastor. She told us how the men she ministered to had done horrible, unspeakable things, but also how they were human beings who had suffered abuse. She could sit over a meal and tell of these men without  judging; she acknowledged their horrific crimes and their humanity. And always, she was cheerful, bright, wise, and kind. Then  three years ago she shared, over a light salad, how she was having discomfort and could not eat much. That discomfort progressed into cancer.

                        Tears. Treatments. Pain. Fears. All of it and more, she and her family have gone through  much. Yet, like some people, Sadie has somehow continued to smile and radiate energy—until this week when she told Mary Ann, “I knew this would happen (her decline). Do what you have to do…it happens so fast.” The vibrant, loving lady who went to seminary late in life in order to serve humanity now has only about an hour of energy each day.

                        Change is happening on the mountain and in our lives. In the midst of all that change,  we are occupied with the ordinary concerns of life. But, are we living or just going through the motions? Perhaps we should heed Sadie’s words-”it happens so fast”-and do what really matters.

By Roger Barbee

If you travel our lake front street early on some mornings, you may see two old men between a small building and the street. One is riding a stationary handcycle while the other sits in his chair and participates, not in the riding, but in the conversation—which covers a variety of topics.

 Ken is the riding buddy. I am the hand cycler. I knew him before I met him. I liked him then, more now.

Ken and his wife Cheryl were moving here from Rhode Island, and I first met her when she was here to check on the renovations of their new home which is across the street from ours.   I saw her checking for mail on such a visit, and I introduced myself, and as we chatted she told me that her husband was a cancer survivor and organ recipient.

After our encounter, I kept thinking of the man I had never met. I kept thinking of the man who, like my friend Mike, was a transplant survivor. I kept thinking of a man and his wife who were moving to live near a daughter. I kept thinking of cancer and its horrors. I kept think of an organ transplant. I respected and admired him before I met him because of all that he had done, none of it witnessed by me.

The moving van arrived on a day of rain. The renovated house was becoming a home for the woman I had chatted with and the man I had never met. But one day while driving home I passed a man I thought was he. After parking my car in our driveway, I went to the street to talk with the walker. It was Ken. He stood on the side of our street, and we talked about everything but nothing. It all mattered but was mostly of little significance. Yet what is important is that the man I had admired from a distance was now present.

Some mornings he walks across our street and sits in his chair as I ride. We talk and in that loose, relaxed chatter and banter we relate. We have learned each other, and I wonder sometimes if we would have ever met in our previous lives. But I doubt that because we led different lives then, but not now. Now he and I are here, two retired men sharing life lived well.

I knew Ken before I met him, and when he walks across the street to sit with me, we share more and more of this life as it is reflected from our past lives with its scars.

The mystic William Blake wrote, “ The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.” Like the bird and spider of Blake, I have been gifted by the man I knew and admired before I met him. He’s my riding buddy.

By Roger Barbee

On a recent evening, my wife and I were sitting on our screened porch watching another hot, summer day simmer to an end over Lake Norman. A CD of the number one songs by Johnny Cash helped our mood as the worn disc moved from favorite song to favorite song .  However, like many things we think we know, I was surprised by a line in one of the songs, a song I know the “history” of and have enjoyed. The line that I seemed to fully comprehend for the first time and that engendered my thinking is, “’Cause there’s something in a Sunday/ Makes a body feel alone…”

In his mournful song, Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down, Kris Kristofferson writes of a  Sunday morning in which a man suffering a hangover tries to make sense of the world. Drinking two beers to help his hangover, he puts on his “cleanest dirty shirt” and goes outside to witnesses the world begin another Sunday—all with him as observer, not participant. Crossing an empty street he smells chicken being fried and laments, “And it took me back to somethin’/ That I’d lost somehow, somewhere along the way.” He continues on his journey to nowhere and with no one by his side.

 Perhaps the song is a memory of Merton College in Oxford where Kristofferson studied as a Rhodes Scholar; maybe it is a story of one of the long nights/mornings he spent as a struggling artist in Nashville during the late 1960’s; or it could be just an anecdote he heard. Whatever! the narrative captures the misery of a life ill spent in whole or parts, but still resulting in regret.

In Thoughts in Solitude Thomas Merton writes, “Violence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us.” Now, we all know (or should) that violence comes in many packages, but no matter how it is wrapped, violence leaves wounds. And the fatal violence Merton writes of is often the result of uncontrolled anger, an addiction, or some other evil cause. Kristofferson is writing of alcoholism and when that violence in a bottle becomes the ordinary of a life it ceases to disturb because it is what has become normal. Then, often too late, the addict becomes like the narrator in the song who smells frying chicken and remembers something lost along the way. That “something” is likely a person or persons and on a Sunday morning all the narrator can do is to numb himself with alcohol and suffer through another day of regret.

On my desk sits a black and white photograph taken in the front yard of my paternal grandparents. The poplar trees in the background are bare, but I know it is Easter Sunday because two cousins knelling in front of the photograph hold their Easter baskets.  My younger brother and sister stand with me and an older sister. Behind my brother is our father who wears a suit jacket, opened-collared shirt, and is looking toward the camera, but his face is full of shadow. The photograph is important for me because our father seldom shared Sundays with us and my two older sisters who are not in the photograph. Years before he had deserted us and our mother, but he is present this day because his parents and siblings had gathered for Easter Sunday. And for whatever reason he posed for the photograph, a stranger standing with his children.

The father in the photograph would understand Kristofferson’s song because he was like the narrator—a man trying to make sense of the world as seen through the violent haze of alcohol. He would keenly understand how a familiar smell could trigger a memory of something that he had lost “somehow, somewhere along the way.” He would intimately know the loneliness of Sundays,  even a special one like this Easter Sunday. But I wonder if the shadow covering his face in the photograph is not a forewarning of the shadow he would feel later after his children had walked to their mother’s home, and he returned to “somewhere along the way.”

By Roger Barbee

According to a Google search I recently conducted, as many adults regularly play chess as are users of Facebook. That is a large number of the world’s population, and while I am not a user of  the latter, I play the former. My rating is about 725, which means that I am far from being a good player. But that is okay because my rating cannot gauge the satisfaction I receive from playing on-line chess: I have won a few more games than I have lost; I have had some draws; I have lost to women; I have lost to younger players; I have played players who live in a range of countries; I have been checkmated by a player waiting for a flight in an airport; I have learned about COVID in other countries through the message board; and I have been gifted by a player in India.

Recently I logged in and requested to play. The machinery spun and a player’s user name, national flag, and rating appeared on the screen. The player’s rating was about fifty points higher than mine, so I would be awarded ten points for a win, two points for a draw, and six points for a loss. I was excited because I would rather lose to a superior player than beat a lesser one; plus, sometimes I play poorer against lower rated players. So I moved my white pawn and waited for his response with a dark piece.

By my fourth or fifth move, his superior skill was causing me trouble. I could find no way to penetrate his wall of pawns, and he was beginning to advance his major pieces. I had a sinking feeling, but I continued looking for some way to gain some foothold. Yet it seemed the harder I tried, the more perilous my position was. My big blunder in losing my queen did not help my cause, and soon, mercifully, my doom was imminent. I had several pawns, one lonely king, and a rook to my opponent’s  array of powerful pieces. Then his queen captured my rook. Done! Kaput! Fried! But—wait. The result screen showed that my opponent had resigned, and I was awarded ten points for the win. I messaged him and asked why. He responded, “I am rated higher than you, and the game was not fair.” He had required me to play while not patronizing me by “letting” me win.

Fair? The game was more than fair; it was just. I was whopped by a superior player, and I wonder if he is not a superior person as well? I mean, would I resign a game I had clearly won because I was rated higher than my opponent? Do I have the character required to freely give away ten points of my rating?

He required me to play then he gave me the gift, and I do not mean the ten points. When he resigned he created a moment of kindness and gentleness. When he resigned, he demonstrated that chess on my level is more than points in a rating. When he resigned, he acted like the champion he is.

By Roger Barbee

An internet server in the Charlotte area airs a commercial touting the advantages it offers consumers. After the usual hype with an attractive person talking, the over voice says (to paraphrase), “It’s time to get what you deserve.” My hardback dictionary states that “deserve”  means “to be worth of” or “merit.” That first meaning has two connotations: to gain something positive, such as an award; or to receive a negative response to a particular action. Thus, a studious student may be awarded with academic accolades while a spiteful person may be ill-treated by another person. So in general, we use “deserve” to denote being awarded for hard work, courage, or other such positive acts.

Now, I know that language changes over the course of years because of our usage of it. In fact, several academics will argue that it must change in order for us to communicate effectively. Thus, the verb “quote” is now used to designate the noun “quotation”, and the longer form seems to have suffered a slow death. But my favorite new grammar usage, used by even the best of written sources, is “went missing.” A sentence such as, “The toddler went missing over the weekend” is as common as the sin of lying. I do not know why writers use two words when one, such as “disappeared”, would suffice, but “went missing” is here to stay. Furthermore, the verb “went” is a transitive which means that if it has a direct object, that object must be a noun or pronoun. However, that may be too complex, so let us just suggest we all use one simple word for the awkward phrase “went missing” because “missing” is not a place but a modifier.

It is no surprise that a television commercial maligns our language since its purpose is to communicate to the consumer. But I think we are headed down that “slippery slope” of misunderstanding each other if we continue on the path we are following. For example, I am old enough to remember the flap over a popular cigarette advertisement that stated, “… taste good like a cigarette should.” Our world has survived that confusion between like and as, but I  wonder at what price.

Not too many years ago, I was teaching 12^th grade English in a school in Woodstock, VA. The position was provisional for that spring semester, but would become full time the following fall, so I applied for the full-time position. During the interview, the principal asked me why I was requiring my classes to read Macbeth in the original and not in a translation. Shocked by her ignorance, I answered that we read Shakespeare for many reasons, but especially for the language. More recently when I shared with a friend one more article by an English teacher arguing that there was no need to teach Shakespeare, he responded, “Soon Shakespeare may be offered as a way to satisfy a foreign language requirement.”

Language matters and if we shift too much in its use, we will create confusion instead of clarity. To defend incorrect usage by, “Well, you know what I meant,” is a lazy excuse. As a reader and/or listener, all I know is what I read and/or hear. Anything else is a guess and if you don’t want my attention to go missing, then be precise. We both deserve it.