New Year's thoughts

Time is running out this year and I am giving some thought to what I have learned this year and what I still have to learn. This has been a very long year and I am glad to have it come to a close. When I think back over the turmoil of this year and all of the anxiety and chaos that have been steady companions of my life, I am happy that I just survived without having a real breakdown.

One of the constant companions of this year has been guerilla attacks from depression and despair. I have come to dread their attacks and sometimes worry that I do not have the energy or strength to hold them at bay. At those times, an old saying comes to me about surviving when your being is under attack-- when you get to the end of your rope; you tie a knot and hold on. I have a new version of that slogan. When you get to the end or your rope, tie a knot in your faith rope and hold on for all you are worth. In fact, you can tie multiple knots in your faith rope and hold on to as many of those knots that you can get your hands on, depression and despair are not what you want as constant companions in anything that you try to define as life. When they are present even in small quantities, you don’t have life; you have a recipe for a struggle that will eat at the very fabric of your being.

I have learned that I do not like being blind and having to depend on so many people other than myself to get through life. There are times when I found myself shouting out to an empty room that I hated being blind. I still find myself doing that when the constant blackness becomes almost overwhelming. There is no let up in the blackness and it sometimes feels like I am being smothered in the darkness, there is no dawn to chase back the constant shadows, so I have to find something in myself to confront the feelings that constant darkness seems to invite to move in as a permanent resident and not just as a passing guest. When this first happened to me , I was told that the passing of time would make things better; they are no better, you just learn to live with what tune is being played, you get no extra credit for sitting on the edge of the room when everyone else is dancing. All you get out of that approach is turning yourself into a wallflower and all wallflowers do is just sit around hoping to get potted. That doesn’t work either.

I will plan my work for the coming year and also work my plan to improve as much as I can where I can with reasonable expectations for success. I will use every resource at my disposal to keep from being turned into a defeated, bitter, whining old man. If that is allowed to happen, then everyone is punished by my blindness. To have blindness of the eyes grow into blindness of the soul will be a sickness that has no cure and is deadly in a way that contaminates all those it touches. So here is to ending the old year with a smile in spite of everything and romping out to meet the new year with a Pepsodent smile that comes not from toothpaste, but from a faith that says there is someone looking out for the likes of you and me.

Sunday, November 16th

This is our second attempt to add dialogue and meaning to our blog. My intention is to add some thoughts and observations every day or so and let them just register on this page. Today has been a nice cool day in Baton Rouge, the sun has been out; the wind has been softly blowing, and it has been a lovely day. Our Sunday worship was a good experience, and the afternoon was really nice. We were able to collect our thoughts about how much training had occurred in my life since I have been blinded and where I need to go from here.

I have a Scottie dog by the name of Ralph and Ralph loves to chase squirrels. He often makes that his afternoon exercise and his hobby. In my life I have noticed that the squirrels have something to teach me. The squirrels have to move from tree to tree in order to motivate around the backyard and Ralph watches them as they make their movements. There are times when the squirrels will jump from one tree to another and will come close to missing the limb that they are aiming for. I have even seen a squirrel attempt to jump to a limb and miss completely and fall to the ground. The squirrel got up and looked around as if he was wondering if anybody saw him fall and ran to the tree and rapidly climbed back up. That's what squirrels do. They have to take a risk in jumping from one tree to another. Or they're going to have to spend their life in just one tree.

I found that that is true also of my condition. I am now blind. Obviously I have never been blind before, and I am up in a blind tree. In this blind tree, many of the things that I'm doing now, attempting now, learning now are helping me come down from this blind tree and move to another tree. Like the squirrel, I do not want to spend the rest of my life in one tree either. If I do not do come down, then my life will be limited to just one tree, and that's not much of a tree to get stuck in, so for a blind man to make a Sunday afternoon attempt to jump from one limb in a blind three to another limb in a tree that is governed by computers and monitors and software and e-mail and printers. Hopefully someone will contact me back and let me know how my attempt is going.

We are fixing to have a lovely supper of roast pork, smoked ribs, sensation salad and about six other wonderful friends who are coming over to help us celebrate the afternoon. After all, LSU won again last night; that was a miracle. So maybe it's really nice that we will celebrate this afternoon. Hope you have a good day and a good week and I will write to you later. If you have anything to share with me, I would love to hear it. Thanks for your attention--talk to you later.

Reformation Sunday

As I speak today it is Reformation Sunday, and we are only one Monday away from the national election that will be held on Tuesday. If you are like me, you are probably very happy that the election is finally going to happen and all the verbiage that leads to the election is finally going to be over. And we will be able to move along on a new path. My understanding of the political process has left me a little disillusioned this time because of what I sense is a national attitude about the election -- and trusting the political parties that are involved in the election. Many of the people that I am talking with are taking a wait-and-see attitude to find out what happens when the smoke clears from all the political posturing and commentary that will drone on about the election.

This election will no doubt be quite an important election, because so many new things will be happening. We have an older man running for president with a woman as a vice presidential candidate. That is new and welcome. And an African-American candidate running for president with an old timer as a vice presidential candidate is quite a mixture of things: old with new, male with female, black with white, haves and have-nots, and insiders and outsiders. All of that seems to be in the mix. I have no idea and really no real outcome that I am committed to. I think it will be nice for the nation to see what really happens and the things that this nation can find itself capable of being and becoming that is shown through the election.

One thing that I know is that I will be praying long and hard for whoever wins because the problems that are to be faced by the political leaders of our time are seen to be many and they seem to be complex, and I'm not sure that they can be handled without a lot of attention and with a lot of courage and a lot of commitment. I know that in some circles asking for divine help and intervention in these things is a little out of step now. However, if you go back and read about the writing of the original Constitution in Philadelphia, you will see that often in the confused atmosphere of writing that Constitution the framers took time out to ask for divine help and divine guidance and divine intervention. It seems to have worked really well for them and maybe, just maybe, it'll work really well for us.

Here's to a happy Election Day and a good outcome for the nation!

Intro by Jim Sawyer

If you are wondering what this blog is all about, I'll take a few moments to tell you. I am a retired Presbyterian minister, and retired certified counselor, who was blinded by a surgical accident. I am using software on the computer that is new and different from others and it may turn out to be difficult to use. (I am speaking to my computer as it types for me.) I'll be making some 70-year-old observations as I view the world around me, as a way of communicating what I have gone through and what I think others may be going through in life.