I’m supposed to be an adult, right?

I’m here in Grapevine, Texas, with my family, and at 11:54pm last night, I drove with my three nephews to a nearby Wal-Mart. John Mark (the oldest) recently graduated with an engineering degree and leaves Monday for a prestigious internship with Cisco Systems in Raleigh, North Carolina. Joseph (his younger brother) is engaged to be married and, if all goes well, will enter graduate work in physical therapy after his senior year at Abilene Christian University. Josh (their cousin) plans to attend Marymount Manhattan College in New York City this fall, majoring in accounting.

Well, this prestigious group of young men went to Wal-Mart with their Uncle Al at midnight last night for the long-awaited release of the seventh (and final) book in the Harry Potter phenomenon.

The funny thing was that Josh was the only one who wanted a book. I went hoping to take pictures of crazy costumes or knock-down, drag-out fights over a children’s book. I think John Mark and Joseph went just to make fun.

Wal-Mart had a security guard out parking the cars for the midnight crowd. They handed out free water and made a special Harry Potter cupcake-cake for everyone. They also handed out bracelets (red guaranteed to get a book, green for maybe… I’m not sure what the blue and yellow were for…). This was a big deal, you know?

It wasn’t really an emotional crowd, however. Only a couple of lame costumes, and absolutely no fights. When we made it to the front of the line, it looked as if there were plenty of books in stock for everyone in line and then some, so I didn’t feel compelled to wait around to snap pictures of the first people who didn’t get a book.

The best picture I got was the one of crazy Josh paying obeisance to the surprised checkout girl who presented him with his treasured book.

But we had a blast: four smart aleck guys up past their bedtime.

I’m suspecting last night was the last time I’ll get to hang out specifically with the sons of my sisters, just the four of us. That might not be such a big deal to the three of them, but their Uncle Al was glad he tagged along.

We drove to Dallas yesterday for my family’s annual summer reunion. With one sister in Texas and one in Arkansas (and me in Mississippi), we rotate each year between the three states in an attempt to find one time each year when we can all get together.

We came yesterday with an extra special plan, and that was to see Pam. We all love Pam, and she moved back here close to a year ago, and we’ve missed her so.

We made it to town right at 5pm, visited with my sister a few minutes and brought all our stuff inside, then headed over to Southlake to meet Pam for dinner. We had a great time wandering around the Southlake Town Square, checking out the impressive painted cows, and simply enjoying the beautiful evening. Pam treated us to way too much food at The Cheesecake Factory, and it was just a great night.

Pam has had a very hard couple of years, but we found her doing well last night. That made us both feel so good. I think she has been heroic through it all, and she deserves to be doing well.

I went to the dentist yesterday, which unfortunately constitutes a major event in my life, seeing as how those visits are so rare. I remember getting a six-month reminder notice in the mail at some point, and I remember putting it off in honor of my personal tradition. I suspected it had been a year since my last cleaning.

Turned out to be two.

Which gives me a good excuse: the reminder must have been lost in Hurricane Katrina.

Oh well, it turned out like all my other visits. No problems, other than the fact that I don’t floss. And I never make my six-month visits.

I once again made a half-hearted mental commitment to start flossing and make the regular six-month cleanings. The dental hygienist must not have believed me since she gave me a battery-operated toothbrush to work on my gums. I prefer the old days when I got lollipops instead.

Anyway, this isn’t the point of my story.

Instead, when I arrived, there was an attractive young couple, probably in their early twenties, sitting in the waiting room. I said “hi” as I made eye contact with them, signed in, then found a travel magazine to take a mental vacation. But I couldn’t help notice that the female part of the couple was… how shall I say… bubbly? Energetic? Put it this way: she could hardly sit still, and she seemed like she was begging someone to have a conversation with her.

Since she was an attractive young girl with either her boyfriend or husband, I thought it best to learn about the top twenty beaches in the world instead of engaging her in conversation, so I stayed behind my magazine. But she was kind of hard to ignore.

She was watching the television in the waiting room, audibly reacting to every news story and commercial. Then, when a commercial came on singing the children’s song, “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands…” Well, she just clapped her hands.

Now how many of you are going to do that in a quiet waiting room?

She laughed at herself, and I had to put down the magazine and laugh, too. As did her boyfriend/husband. She went on to finish the whole song, never missing a chance to go clap, clap.

In a few minutes, her boyfriend/husband was called back to the dental dungeon. Soon afterward, a rather angry older man came stumbling out, not happy at all to be alive at that moment in time. He stumbled out the front door, muttering all the way. After he left, I looked at the young lady and said that he didn’t look very happy. She smiled and sang, “Clap your hands.” (Clap. Clap.)

I wish I was that happy!

Our Peak of the Week Class begins each week with my summoning all the children to the front to sing a few songs. It had come to the point where the adults yawned and talked and didn’t participate much at all while the kids sang. After dismissing the kids last week, I had a heart-to-heart talk with everyone. I strongly encouraged everyone to come on Wednesdays, sit up front, be goofy with the kids, and make those ten minutes a highlight of their week. And I wondered how it would go last night.

Well, the spirit of my dentist office friend must have rubbed off on everyone because last night was very different. We did the children’s song from Hades, Father Abraham, and everyone just had a big old time flailing arms and legs around with the kids. I was very happy.

And I knew it.

So I just might clap my hands.

I’ve never met Will Campbell, but I find him fascinating. I first heard of him in Philip Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace? in a story I’ve told a hundred times since. Earlier this year, I read his most famous book, Brother to a Dragonfly, which, beautifully weaves a bit of autobiography through the tragic story of his relationship with his brother.

Brother to a Dragonfly left me hanging, though. It left Will sort of disillusioned with life in the heart of the Civil Rights Movement. I have always thought of the Civil Rights Movement as almost a spiritual shangri-las, a time where following the way of Jesus seemed much more of a real choice. It probably helps that it was in my own backyard. And almost my own lifetime. Yet Will Campbell sees through that façade, too. He moved on to loving the Klan, too.

I received in the mail yesterday what I think is sort of the next chapter in his story, a memoir he titled, Forty Acres and a Goat. I began reading it last night.

I suspect many of my readers wouldn’t like Will Campbell at all. Others might fall in love with him, too. Let me share a brief article about Campbell with you today (about a PBS documentary on his life called God’s Will, a documentary I’d love to get my hands on someday if I only knew how…). This article may whet your appetite for Campbell. Or make you nauseous. Either way, dinner’s served!!!!!!!

Will Campbell, ordained as a Baptist preacher in backwoods Mississippi, was the only white minister present at the creation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He escorted nine black students through angry mobs at Central High School in Little Rock. He was present at sit-ins, civil rights demonstrations, and strategy meetings with Martin Luther King.

Will Campbell, a graduate of Yale’s divinity school, is an amateur country musician and hardscrabble farmer who sips whiskey with friends who are members of the Ku Klux Klan. He holds all institutions–including the church–in disdain and refuses to pastor even the smallest congregation. He doesn’t even attend church Sunday mornings.

“In all these years I can’t think of one thing I’ve actually, personally, accomplished,” he once wrote.

Yet he is considered by many people to be one of the nation’s most influential spiritual leaders…

Campbell is “a deeply religious man,” President Jimmy Carter says of his friend who chews tobacco and wears cowboy boots. “One who has a great deal of spirit. Calm. Wise. Witty. Eloquent.”

Campbell’s memoir, “Brother to a Dragonfly,” was nominated for a National Book Award. In his 13 books since he has continued writing about race, religion, and community.

Campbell grew up poor in rural Mississippi, and when he preached his first sermon in his community’s church he read from a pulpit Bible that had been presented by the KKK. But he could never embrace his society’s preoccupation with keeping people segregated and groups apart.

“I don’t know how to say this without sounding terribly presumptuous,” he explains, “but I don’t recognize the concept of different kinds of people.”

“Will Campbell is an articulate and authentic witness to what is the best of humanity,” says minister and civil rights activist James Lawson. “He should be one of the models that America lifts up for what it means to be an American. What it means to be a human being.”

“God’s Will” explores Campbell’s life, his efforts to repudiate racism and division, and his work to reach out to civil rights workers and avowed racists alike.

The program includes interviews with the celebrities and writers who are among his friends, such as Tom T. Hall, Waylon Jennings, John Egerton, and Jules Feiffer.

The documentary also shows Campbell working in what he believes the church to be: not a television evangelist’s satellite empire–he calls these people “electronic soul molesters.” And not big buildings with tall steeples and gymnasiums that are open only to members.

“There is a little tavern we go to quite often,” he says, talking about his rural home near Nashville. “I marry the people. Bury the people. Get them out of jail, or try to, and so on. Every one of them, without exception, would be at my house as quickly as they could get there. And I would be at theirs.

“That is church.”

The statistics are mind-boggling:
* More than 870,000 documented cases of child abuse in our country every year – how many go un-documented?
* Over 1,250 children die each year directly from child abuse or neglect – the majority are under 5 years old
* 9 out of 10 abusers are a child’s parents/guardians
* 1 out of 4 girls and 1 out of 6 boys will be sexually assaulted by age 18
* Between 80% and 90% of prisoners were victims of child abuse

Mind-boggling.

And what do we do about this? Shaking our head in sadness doesn’t seem sufficient. After last night, I have a suggestion:

Become a CASA volunteer.

CASA stands for “Court Appointed Special Advocate.” A CASA volunteer speaks up for the best interests of a child by making sure that the court, social services, and legal counsel do their jobs for that child. One of my all-time favorite passages is Proverbs 31: 8-9 which urges speaking up for those who cannot speak for themselves. Where is that more appropriate than when speaking up for an abused or neglected child?

You have to be 21 years old to volunteer. You have to fill out a bunch of paperwork. You have to do 30 hours of training. It doesn’t seem too much to do for a child in such desperate need.

I went with my friend, Dana, to our first training session last night. We were 2 of 13 volunteers there. 4 were veteran CASA volunteers, and 9 were brand new. We ranged from a great-grandmother to a young man who is hoping to go to law school. There were 3 pastors in the group. There was 1 lady whose husband was killed six years ago, which ended their desire to be foster parents – so she decided to be a CASA volunteer instead. We are a diverse group, and that is beautiful. Our only problem is that we are too small.

Our director had a death in the family, so the Youth Court Judge, Sharon Sigalas, conducted the session. She told us that her little courtroom handled 1600 cases of abuse and neglect every year. I was blown away. 1600 cases, just in our county!

My wife and I spent three years of our marriage as houseparents at a residential group childcare facility, so I am no longer shocked by what happens to children. I continue to be shocked, however, by the sheer numbers. Combine that with the proven concept that abused and neglected children need adults who care about them personally, and I’m humbled to think how many volunteers are needed to make a difference for children in need.

So I’m spreading the word today. Check out CASA HERE. Find out where you can get involved in your community. Change the world.

I don’t guess I had ever heard of (or noticed) Rachel Carson before, but I now know that she had a stamp named after her back when I was eleven years old. She was a scientist, ecologist, and writer who, among her many accomplishments, wrote a book that shocked the United States into banning DDT and other harmful pesticides.

Tom from New York sends me encouraging emails from time to time. Though we’ve never met in person, he is a valued friend. He read some of my Katrina e-book this past weekend, and my section on noticing the beauty of the stars in the first days after the hurricane reminded him of a section from Rachel Carson’s book, The Sense of Wonder. I’ve now learned that this book encouraged adults to take kids to wild nature and expand their imagination by introducing them to the wonderful variety in this world. Sounds like a book worth reading to me…

Anyway, I just thought I’d start your week the way mine started: with an insightful selection from Rachel Carson. Enjoy.

Exploring nature with your child is largely a matter of becoming receptive to what lies all around you. It is learning again to use your eyes, ears, nostrils and finger tips, opening up the disused channels of sensory impression.For most of us, knowledge of our world comes largely through sight, yet we look about with such unseeing eyes that we are partially blind. One way to open your eyes to unnoticed beauty is to ask yourself, “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?”

I remember a summer night when such a thought came to me strongly. It was a clear night without a moon. With a friend, I went out on a flat headland that is almost a tiny island, being all but surrounded by the waters of the bay. There the horizons are remote and distant rims on the edge of space. We lay and looked up at the night sky and the millions of stars that blazed in the darkness. The night was so still that we could hear the buoy on the ledges out beyond the mouth of the bay. Once or twice a word spoken by someone on the far shore was carried across in the clear air. A few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise, there was no reminder of other human life; my companion and I were alone with the stars. I have never seen them more beautiful: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. Once or twice a meteor burned its way into the earth’s atmosphere.

It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century or even once in a human generation, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be seen many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they will never see it.

An experience like that, when one’s thoughts are released to roam through the lonely spaces of the universe, can be shared with a child even if you don’t know the name of a single star. You can still drink in the beauty, and think and wonder at the meaning of what you see.

After an adventurous Friday, our group of guys checked into the Jameson Inn in Newnan, Georgia, just after midnight. We got a kick out of seeing one of our own, Matt Ruffin, had his name on the welcome board (since he had made the reservations). Several particularly enjoyed that his name almost looked associated with the PGA women’s golf group that stayed there, too.

We left the hotel late yesterday morning and traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, where twelve of us played a round of golf at Lagoon Park. None of us would have impressed the PGA women’s golf group, I’m sure, most especially me. This was the first time I looked at my hand-me-down golf clubs since we made this same trip last September, and it showed early and often.

I shot a 125, which I am actually proud of considering (a) my lack of playing, and (b) my ability in the first place.

It was a nice course, one of the top-ranked public courses in the United States, but once again, the beauty was in the opportunity for a bunch of guys from church to spend the afternoon simply enjoying time to be together.

Several years ago now, Gene Logan began organizing an annual trip for the guys from our church family to watch a major league baseball game. It has been one of my personal favorite things to do ever since.

Our normal trip is to Atlanta, but we have made a couple of trips to Houston as well. This year was Atlanta, however, and last night 19 of us witnessed a good old-fashioned whipping, as the Brian McCann and Tim Hudson led Braves defeated the Pirates 9-1.

The trip was significantly more adventurous than we anticipated. We took three vehicles, and the one with Pat, Richard, Cameron, Richie, and Matthew was well down the road in front of the other two not long after we left our Cracker Barrell breakfast in Mobile, Alabama (some of us were a little slower than the rest after breakfast!). Not long after we left Mobile, our church van began to shake significantly, and pretty much at the top of the HUGE bridge over the Mobile River the front left tire blew.

This was not good.

The nine of us found ourselves perched VERY HIGH on the bridge, on its very narrow shoulder, with the need to change a front left tire in the oncoming traffic.

I learned a few things:

• There are an awful lot of eighteen-wheelers that travel the bridge that goes over the Mobile River.
• All of these trucks travel at high rates of speed.
• When two eighteen-wheel trucks are driving side by side, the one in the right-hand lane cannot switch lanes.
• When these trucks pass a van perched high on the bridge above the Mobile River, the van shakes a LOT.
• The bridge over the Mobile River is VERY HIGH, and the guard rail is NOT very high.

I learned even more things:

• No state troopers travel over the bridge over the Mobile River at all it seems.
• Gene Logan has no fear (addendum to this fact: Gene Logan does not look to see if eighteen wheelers are coming while he waltzes around a bridge VERY HIGH above the Mobile River while changing a flat tire.).
• Tom O’Connell, who turned his truck around to come back to help us, is my personal hero.

You see, you can learn an awful lot on a trip to the baseball game.

But we made it, even with the visit to the Wal-Mart automotive department in Bay Minette, Alabama, to purchase four new tires for the van. Instead of arriving at our hotel and checking in, then arriving at Turner Field our customary two hours before gametime, we made it to the park around 45 minutes before gametime.

Still, we made it in plenty of time to have a great time with friends, see an entertaining game, watch the Friday night fireworks show, and pay over five dollars for a jumbo hot dog.

As the credit card commercial says… priceless.

It turned out to be a delightful morning. I dropped Hillary off for her fourth day of dance camp, then drove down to East Beach in Ocean Springs in hopes of capturing a picture for my Ocean Springs photo-project. I’ve long since committed to including a person in each of my pictures, and I have driven down East Beach many a time in hopes of catching someone at just the right time. Yesterday seemed to be a repeat performance.

But I drove through one final time, and I noticed a couple of ladies out walking their dogs on the beach. I thought that, after broaching that uncomfortable “do you care if I take your picture” phase of the project, this just might work. So I parked and got into position to ask them on their way back down the beach.

When I asked if they would mind if I took their picture, the immediate (and obvious) response was, “What for?” When I explained, the second lady remembered me from when I took a picture recently at the Mary C. O’Keefe Center. They agreed, and I trailed along with the sun to my back, trying to capture a good shot.

It turned out that my best picture was more of a random, fun one. One of their friends rode by on a bicycle, so they yelled, “Take a picture of that lady!” I jumped out in the road and did, and I think that’s the shot I will use for my book (check it out HERE).

After my brief photo-shoot, one of the ladies asked if I wanted to see her destroyed house (East Beach was devastated by Katrina). I accepted her offer, and I walked with Peggy and Joey and their two dogs up to the house you see a bit of in the picture above. It really was a mess.

It turned out to be a fascinating story.
* Peggy’s family is actually living in the back of this house while they wait to rebuild.
* They are waiting to rebuild because their house was designed by famed architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, which means that there is a lot of wrangling with the Historic Preservation Commission that must come first.
* And, Peggy’s son rode out the storm in the house with several of his friends! She showed me the rope hanging from high in the tree closest to their backdoor. Her son tied the rope in the tree after swimming out of the house and clinging to the tree for his life. He and his friends reported watching a massive sea turtle glide beneath them as Hurricane Katrina launched her furious attack on the mainland.

We simply visited for fifteen or twenty minutes, exchanging stories from an unforgettable storm that changed our lives.

It turned out to be a delightful morning.

Paul Bunyan

Jay DeFrees made multiple trips to Ocean Springs from northern Illinois following Hurricane Katrina. On one of those trips, we discovered a common bond involving a love for the St. Louis Cardinals. It did my heart good to receive emails from Jay from time to time simply saying “How ’bout those Cardinals?” He even called my house after the World Series last year (which, in case you have forgotten, the Cardinals won)!!!!My family went to Disneyworld a year ago April, and we were at Disney-MGM Studios one day. We were getting off of the Backlot Tour ride when I heard someone yelling my name. It was Jay and his wife! We had the pleasure of briefly introducing our wives to one another (and each other), and I walked away smiling at how that crazy hurricane had made the world wonderfully smaller.

Jay’s heart has been in Mississippi ever since those trips he had made, and he was overjoyed when he found out some church folks from his world were making a trip to Pascagoula. He jumped at the opportunity to come. He emailed me a couple of weeks ago, and we set up a date to have lunch while he was here. That was yesterday, and he and I enjoyed lunch at Monica’s in Pascagoula together. We swapped stories from days gone by, and he asked me lots of questions about how things have gone for us at the Ocean Springs Church of Christ.

But my favorite story of the whole time involved our (now) mutual friend, Travis Hass (a.k.a. Paul Bunyan), pictured above.

To briefly introduce you to Travis, Travis had decided to take a semester off from college in August 2005. Even though he wasn’t much past twenty years old, Travis could do it all in terms of house construction, and he had planned to remodel a few houses, make some money, and simply take the time to refocus his life. Then, Hurricane Katrina struck. He came to the Gulf Coast with his preacher, Jack James, and they were heroes to us. They came initially as experts in floating sheetrock, but before long, Travis had decided to spend his semester – the one he was using to refocus his life – living at our church building and heroically rebuilding houses. Along the way, I learned that Travis was an excellent speaker, a brave firefighter, and a deep thinker.

Plus, he is really strong. Which is where my lunch with Jay comes in.

Jay asked about Travis yesterday. He said that after his trips to Ocean Springs, he would make presentations for his church family, telling them all about the unforgettable people and experiences from Ocean Springs. He told stories about Travis throwing roofing tiles up on a roof while he and a friend struggled together to push one at a time on the roof, and before long he said “Travis-stories” began to take on mythical proportion – “like Paul Bunyan” he said.

Jay said that his young son is enthralled by Travis, a young man he has never met. Travis has become a regular character in their father-son interactions, this larger-than-life figure whose spirit and muscle and heart and love combines to fuel a young boy’s imagination.

I just thought that was wonderful. To think, that a man from Illinois and a man from Georgia met in Mississippi on missions of mercy, and that brief meeting inspires a young boy for the future.

Both Travis and Jay are larger-than-life to me.

Yes, larger than life is a good way to put it.