Roger Barbee

By Roger Barbee

                                                The Better Way

My high school class has a “mini-reunion” each month. The class of 1964 is now, as Jimmy my classmate says, “Leveled out by life.” He means that we are now equal in ways we were not in the early days of the 60’s. I attend those first Tuesday meetings and enjoy the time with two dozen or so classmates and spouses. I  also eagerly await out 55^th reunion in a few weeks. But it was not always so.

As a man in my early 70s, I think of my earlier years often, but especially when I read my local papers. What I read is what you read: crime, guns, drugs, inequality, and pleas for governmental aid in areas of individual apartments to exit ramps for a sports complex.  What I miss reading are accounts of personal responsibility and integrity and, well, grit. 

An unintended consequence of our well-meaning programs spanning from individuals to huge corporations, a government-dependent attitude has sprouted and threatens to overtake us all. I once saw  a photograph in a newspaper of a person holding a sign reading, “Housing insecure.” I don’t know the person or the circumstances of the situation, but I do remember living in the back two rooms of a dilapidated house with my brother, two sisters, and  mother while two older sisters lived with a friend of our mother’s. I know hunger and the want for the things that my schoolmates had.

My world then had the same opportunities of today’s culture. School was available as was work in the mill or elsewhere, and dark ways to earn quick money existed. But our mother demanded that we “get an education” and she modeled right living. She followed the words of the Preacher: “Better is little with righteousness than great revenues without right.”

It seems to me that, as a culture, we are lost. Desire now rules, but it is not a desire for  righteousness, but a desire to satisfy self. And when we reach the dead-end that self-service always leads to, we cry for help, floundering in self-made misery. But even as we cry for help, we seek help at the wrong door.

Instead of self-reliance based on a higher power, we ask a secular god to provide. But that god is man-made, doomed to fail. Yet, there is a  better way, one of righteous living, the one that will lead to joy and contentment.  

By Roger Barbee

            In the epic poem,  The Odyssey, Odysseus returns to his home island after being absent for twenty years. Because the suitors have taken possession of his home, he must return unrecognized in order to attack them by surprise. He arrives home disguised by Athena as a beggar, and he goes to the hut of Eumaios, the keeper of pigs, in order to plan his attack on the suitors. Not knowing who the beggar is, Eumaios treats him with courtesy and feeds him and gives him a place to sleep. When the disguised master thanks his servant for being kind, Eumaios responds, “…rudeness to a stranger is not decency.”

            During the years that I taught Homer’s great poem, I required my students to memorize such lines as that of Eumaios and those of other characters from the poem.  The students then had to relate the chosen quotation to their lives by demonstrating a basic understanding of the quotation and explaining how it was still relevant in their post 2000 world. However, my students and I not only discussed what Homer had to say about hospitality to the sojourner, but also what other ancient writers such as Paul meant when they told followers to  “practice hospitality.” In the ancient world, sojourners needed safe and clean places to spend the nights because the few available inns were full of bandits, prostitutes, and vermin. So, for safety, a traveler looked for a kind person such as Eumaios to share the long, dark night. I suppose, as my students will attest,  in some ways we are all sojourners at times. At various moments in our lives, we have been that traveler looking for a haven for a night, a day, an hour even. And, oftentimes, we have looked for that friendly face to offer us warmth and kindness and understanding about our travels.

            Homer’s use of the lowly swineherd as one of two servants to help his long absent master is, I think, a choice of genius. As many readers may know, a pig parlor is not the most elegant place there is. Raven’s Rock, the home of Eumaios, was a smelly and rather vile place a long distance from the manor house. The swineherd undoubtedly would have smelled much like his charges. And, because of his position he would have held a low rung in the social order of his time. Yet, this low-ranking citizen, like the widow in the Gospels, gives out of his poverty, not his wealth. This seemingly low citizen is the one of the two servants who had remained loyal to his master and helps him rid the manor of the selfish suitors.

            All of this and more has been on my mind as I watch many concerned citizens try to build support in our country to help those in the caravan.  These last few days of damp, cold wind have, for me, been a reminder of the need to help. However, I worry that too many church attendees will choose to turn away from this need. I know that some church groups have stepped up and offered to help by word or deed or both.  I appreciate that some church groups are helping the hungry and homeless in other ways. What I can’t understand is how some church groups find reasons not to help.

            Practicing hospitality causes inconvenience. It means changing routines. It means inviting strangers who may be downtrodden into our spaces. It means being empathetic. Practicing hospitality means sharing time and talk with people who are in need of a hand up. Practicing hospitality can cause you to, as I heard a pastor say last June, “think of what you can give instead of what you don’t have.” Practicing hospitality is an opportunity for personal growth in a faith walk. Practicing hospitality means that we Christians step up and take care of the less fortunate. To do otherwise means that we are just “pew sitters” who attend service to feel better about ourselves. Are you the Christian more worried about the new floor in the fellowship hall or the one who cares about some homeless child?

            Early in The Odyssey, the sage Mentor speaks to the citizens of Ithaca (Odysseus’ home island) about the suitors taking over the manor of Odysseus and the injustice of their action. Mentor laments

the violent plundering of the great leader’s home, but he then goes on to say, “What sickens me is to see the whole community/sitting still, and never a voice … raised.” 

            There is a need in our community. If you choose, you can find many reasons not to help end that need. However, I offer you one good reason to step up and help. Again, the answer comes from ancient literature written by a tax collector turned disciple: go read Matthew 25:35-40. Then ask why you should not step up and help.

By Roger Barbee

The innumerable ways that things have been done in the past, like during the 1950’s of Charlotte, will make sense if examined and thought about instead of criticized.

For instance, in 1957 Charlotte, citizens desired convenience just as they do in 2022. So,  in order to keep fathers from having to find a safe means of disposing of the double edged, still sharp razor blades, manufacturers of metal medicine cabinets provided an easy fix.

Since the metal medicine cabinets were recessed between wall studs, the makers of up-scale bathroom fixtures placed a small, downward pointed slit in the upper middle back of each cabinet. The slit was just large enough for one of those used, double-edged razor blades. Since the space between the studs and back-to-back sheets of  drywall was large and the blades small but still potentially dangerous for a child or unsuspecting adult, it was a good solution. Shave with it, then drop it in the slot preventing any finger from being harmed by it.

However, it must have been a slow news day in Charlotte on January 28, 2022, because our local paper ran a story of a realtor making the discovery of such a medicine cabinet. It seems the realtor was assessing a partially renovated home when the electrician told him about what was sticking out of a wall. He rushed to see what had been found and then researched the phenomenon (on Google?) and learned something: Things were done differently, often for a sound reason, in the past.

But it seems the Charlotte realtor is a late comer to making this discovery of what he describes as a “weird” way of the disposal of used razor blades. In 2020 it seems a Los Angeles woman made the same discovery in her home and posted it on TikTok. Her post had 3.8 million views and almost 3,000 comments.

Now, I understand that not everyone is knowledgeable of residential life during the 1950’s, especially knowing about such details as bathroom medicine cabinets. I applaud the Charlotte realtor for conducting what passes for research in today’s Internet world. I am also pleased that he has the character for admitting that he had learned something. However, what I object to is the Charlotte realtor saying/thinking about the way of disposing of razor blades, “It’s just weird, and we would never think of doing it at all today, at least I hope not.”  All I can say in response to him is that patients at one time were bled as a cure for illness. And as far as the Los Angeles woman, all I wonder is: Are we such a bored society that over 3.8 million folks are entertained on TikTok by a tiny slot in a medicine cabinet?

Sometime in my expanding tenure as a teacher as I aged, I realized how many years began separating me from my students. Aware of my own experiences and sensibilities, I began each new year searching the events of my students’ birth year. In that small way, thinking of the year they were born, I was more aware of their experiences and their exposures. This small knowledge helped me be more sensitive to the time that had helped form my students. From that hallmark, we moved forward as I taught them to fill in any gaps in their historical knowledge and to think critically of their time and times past.

These episodes concerning the renovation of a Charlotte and a Los Angeles home  and the attention they bring should serve as a “real-life example” of the importance for teaching critical thinking skills and history because it matters that our children be made aware that the world has not always been as it is for them. And that looking something up on the Internet is not research, just exploration.

By Roger Barbee

For the past week I have been housebound because the heavy snow storm and its wind left a pile of snow on the back ramp, which I use to enter and exit our house. Over the past eight days of freezing temperatures the pile became a large ice mass. But my friend Shawn came yesterday and cut it into pieces that now jam an unused corner of our yard. This morning the sun shines on our back garden across a bright winter-blue sky, and when the warmth of day increases just a bit, I will venture out with Nick the beagle and ramble about the garden.

It may seem odd to think of warm weather when ice blocks occupy one part of my world, but I saw a reminder of it yesterday out a back window—a pair of doves sat together on a limb of the center dogwood tree before one mounted the other. It’s the middle of January, so I  don’t know for sure about their act, but it is a fresh reminder that, yes, the days are getting longer and warmer. But I remind myself that, no matter what the doves were doing, Shawn’s labor freed me from my housebound sentence, so Nick and I will shortly roam about our back garden.

Even in morning cold, the garden is busy with bird life. A blue bird inspects the entry hole of the birdbox on the center dogwood tree before realizing that the hole is too small, and a brown headed nuthatch moves about the tree trunk looking for day’s first offering. On a high branch a Carolina chickadee basks in morning’s sunlight filtering through the pine canopy.

However, my “play date” with Nick did not materialize because Mary Ann and I decided to get out of the house and go to a favorite flea market. We enjoyed the shared outing and returned in time to take a long walk with Nick on which he met and impressed some neighbors we did not know.

The day did not go as I had planned; but it proved to be an adventure of sorts and that is what matters at its end. That is one of the many sweet spots of life—there are the possibilities for the coming day and for tomorrow and for the next day and so on. After all, Mary Ann, Nick, and I shared parts of the day and we will tomorrow. It’s the way our days go since we were adopted by this beagle. And in the sharing is the joy.

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.

.

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.