Halloween 2023

While Sheila was getting ready to greet Trick or Treaters as a "Witch", I was busy digging up scores of Coleus and other p-lants to bring in before the first freeze tonight.

I put most of them in my bathroom. But I also put a few in the hall and the den as house plants for the winter.

Halloween Throwback

I would guess this was taken about 1993-4.
I think this is the back side yard of our house at 728 Avenue A, under the big Magnolia tree.

Facebook comments from 2009:
Terrell Shaw: Are these precious kids or what? Is Lillian rolling her eyes at her dad or her sister?                 Ruth Baird Shaw: I fully agree! They are precious kids!

 

Our Last Sunday at Trinity

Starbucks, May 22, 2018 - Rev. Nanci Hicks, Sheila and Terrell Shaw

May 22, 2018, at Starbucks on Turner McCall at Riverside Parkway, Sheila and I met with our soon-to-be new pastor, Nanci Hicks, who had just been assigned to our congregation, Trinity United Methodist Church. I had already checked out her preaching by listening to a couple of her sermons from the website of her last appointment; I knew Nanci could preach. In the five and a half years since she has certainly been a blessing through her eloquent, Biblically-grounded, challenging, sermons. She has also been a blessing in many other ways to me and mine during the most trying times in the history of our congregation. 

Barring unforeseen occurrences, today was the last time she will preach at Trinity before it dissolves on November 30 of this year. She preached another powerful sermon. We also said goodbye to Debra Malone our talented organist/pianist and, for the last few months, choir director. We enjoyed the powerful thought-provoking music of Nanci's son Atticus who came to support his Mom today. We shared communion.  

I snuck a picture as Rev. Hicks pronounced our benediction today. That beautiful hand-carved God Is Love pulpit dates at least to before 1939 and likely to the 1800s. It includes the logo and motto of the old Epworth League of the Methodist Episcopal Church South: "All For Christ" . The Omega banner is appropriate I suppose for a day of completion.

And after the service many of us celebrated her ministry with a shared meal and fellowship. There were tears, of course, but there were also laughs and hugs.

None of us know for sure where Nanci's ministry will take her next, but she will be a blessing wherever that is. I hope it'll be somewhere close by.

Today, October 22, 2023

Barring those unlikely occurrences mentioned above, this was also our last Sunday to attend Trinity. My membership will remain until November when it, and that of each of the other 800 or so current members of Trinity United Methodist Church, evaporates. All of us will have decisions to make. I am a United Methodist so I will find a UMC congregation. We have had folks at Cave Spring UMC, Second Avenue UMC, Mt. Tabor UMC, and First UMC invite us to visit their churches. I know we'd be welcome at any of them. And I know we will find a church home. But it is a very sad day for me. I first joined Trinity in 1962. Sheila and I began singing in the choir there in 1982. I had expected to stand, as I have done so many times since 1962, in that Nativity Scene almost every Christmas Eve till my knees give completely out. I had expected my funeral to be held at Trinity UMC.

Many much-loved and influential people in my life have been Trinity folks like Burnita Burton, Jim Smith, Annie Beth Terrell, Chastine Parker, Hugh & Jeanne Holt, Bobby Storey, Brady (Buster) Drummond, Mike Burton, Lynn Popham, Sam Evans, Wint Barton, Grant Magness, Rachel Jones, Kam Malone, and pastors like James Sanders, Scobie Branson, Paul Hanna, George Freeman, David Campbell (I could go on!) and, of course, Nanci Hicks. That's not even counting my family members.  Virtually every day of my life I will pass our former church campus as I leave or return to Avenue A. There will some pain every time I see that beautiful building but that will diminish with time, like other deaths in the family. 

But (again barring something unexpected) we will find a new church home and life will go on.

I cannot pretend not to have some anger about how all this came about -- about 15% of the membership actually cast votes to disband. The General Conference should not have allowed that to be possible. But I must admit a majority voted, whether they meant to or not, by staying home from the vote. I am trying to deal with my anger in love. I truly do love many of the very folks who made this terrible decision, I believe, out of their fear and prejudice.

PTSW - My Own: Commitment

Lillian and Jordan seem to me to be kindred spirits. They join their lives officially later this week. I believe they know that love is a choice. 

Here's a bit of verse I wrote a long time ago about the choice and promise they are making. Lillian's older sister has labeled the sentiments in this little bit of verse as "Dad's rant". Despite her teasing she too recognizes its truth I believe  Yes there must be attraction, compatibility, passion, and more. But it is not love until there is commitment -- a promise. 

I pray this will be a joyful, exciting, fun-filled, and love-filled time as we celebrate their love and the beginning of their life together.

Listen, Daughters

To Brannon and Lillian

Listen, daughters.

Be careful what you name love:

It is not so cheap as musk or fate;

It is not so easy as a fall.

Hear the wisdom of age;

Hear your father’s voice!

Love is a promise.

Love is a choice.

by Terrell Shaw

Arts & Crafts: Laurie Craw

Laurie Craw is our dear friend and a wonderfully talented writer. She is also a talented artist and potter. Here are a few of her works that we own and love. Three of the pieces came to us from my sister Debi recently as she downsizes after retirement.

Heart-shaped slab bowls:

I especially like the pottery "kudzu" basket so I'll use several pictures.

And here's a "kudzu" wreath.

And another.

When our youngest, Lillian, was born, Laurie painted this for us:

She also painted an oval ceramic disk to commemorate Brannon's birth in 1983 -- but I can't that right now.

[More to come] 

 

PTSW - My Own: No Whole

 This one dates to my adolescence. I think it was published in our college literary magazine.

 Faces

Floating fragments of memory tease my mind.

Your many faces are arranged

and rearranged before my mind’s eye.

I am never sure who you really are.

But real is an arbitrary root 

over which I stumble like an infant 

over nothing really.

Love is only real.

But you have really never Loved and

God is Love, and Lord knows, 

He’s not in vogue this year in abstract time,

when like a child’s useless toy 

the windup clock is pounding away fractions 

of something that can have no whole.

by Terrell Shaw

The Money Pit is Yawning Again

Our beloved old Money Pit is being fed major portions of our children's inheritance again, beginning this morning. We hope to have the front porch repairs and painting done, thanks to Will Pinson and his crew, in time to look nice for the wedding festivities. And a start will be made on the back porches as well we hope. And a roofing issue will be fixed. Then we have a long list of more involved stuff. It is never-ending. It all began a little past eight this morning with good wash with water and a little Clorox.

They kindly covered my flowers; I hope they can survive this.

I take good citizenship seriously and so carefully choose my candidates and support them all I can... even by plastering their campaign signs on my yard. This year I am pleased to support the three you see here: Incumbents Bonny Askew and Sundai Stevenson and newcomer and our friend Charles Love. I also support Mark Cochran and Bill Collins -- though I don't have their signs yet. This is an off-off-year election. An astonishingly few votes will make the difference between the six who are elected and the three who are not. Please vote, however you vote. I believe these five candidates will think of our current needs and they will also always keep in mind our posterity as they make decisions representing us as our public servants.

We even have a new temporary structure out back. It's the first time since 1951 that I have lived in a dwelling with an outhouse. We tol' 'em they were welcome to use the indoor facilities, but I s'pose porta-potties are standard accoutrements of homesite projects these days.

------------

1:00 pm

Removing the floor of the porch reveals that the $#*@%# builders who "restored" our house in 1999-2001 cut corners which contributed to the problems that necessitated this redo: too-long joists with little or no bracing. Grrrr. These folks say it will be done right this time.

Buckeyes

I love springtime at Arrowhead, especially the little gully just south of the big beaver pond that fills with the blooms of spring ephemerals in March and April: Mayapples, Sweet Betsy, Foam Flower, Wild Geranium, Star Chickweed -- as well as lots of Red Buckeye trees from tiny sprouts to good sized trees..

Buckeyes blooming at Arrowhead.

 Several years ago I noticed a tiny Buckeye trying to establish itself right in the middle of the path I was trying to clear, so rather than lopping it, I "rescued" it for my own yard. It actually bloomed this year and set two fruit. 

Here is that transplanted Buckeye...

...and here you can see its first two fruits...

...and today the one dropped to the ground and I went ahead and took its sibling.   They are not good for eating, as a matter of fact are mildly poisonous, but Native Americans leeched the poison from them in water then pounded them to meal (as they did with acorns) to make an edible paste. Oldtimers say, though, that it ts a good idea to carry one in your pocket, for luck.