Straight From The Hart

  In 1969 Dr. Carrington told me I had arthritis and would have to take 8 aspirin a day for the rest of my life. I was 26 years old and MJ had just been born. Of course aspirin was the only pain reliever back in those days but that's not the point I want to make. I remember the night I prayed about that. I remember the chair I was sitting in and where the chair was. And I remember my prayer: “Lord, if it is your will that I spend my entire life in pain, dependent upon medication, then I accept that. But I know this one thing. You are able to heal me and I have no doubts about that at all. If you choose not to heal me, then you have a reason. And I accept that, but if it is your will to heal me, I accept that too and I will praise you for it. He healed me that night and I was able to fulfill 4 different career paths and be a wife to Milan and a mother to our daughter.  I was not perfect in either of those areas but I did the best I could.  And God gave me the ability to wr...

  “Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age”..  (James Joyce) I’ve often been accused of being too passionate, of caring too much about certain things.  But I believe that  passion, also defined as fervor or zeal, is  one of the essential core values of human life, along with the Apostle Paul’s Biblical list of the virtues of faith, hope and charity.  Passionate people have strong opinions and usually articulate them very well.  We are also perfectionists, and we don’t handle incompetence in the public arena very well, all of which tend to preclude us from being the most popular person in the room.  I long ago accepted the fact that I won’t have the largest funeral in Lebanon, nor will my obituary make the front page. But not everyone seems to care that much about anything other than their own lives.  T.S. Eliot once said, “It is obvious that we can no more explain pas...

  “A Tale Of Two Families”. Our story starts when three different Bennett families migrated here in the mid to late 1840’s from Virginia and Kentucky through Illinois down to Missouri. About the same time the Brice family migrated to Missouri from Illinois, in search of land which the U.S. Government was selling to settlers for $1.25 an acre. James Brice camped beside a clear stream of water that flowed from a large deep spring and eventually emptied into the Niangua River. He filed a claim with the government for the 160 acres on which the spring was located and kept buying land as money became available until he owned all the land through which the stream flowed on its way to the Niangua. He planted many different crops and built a mill on the stream between the spring and the site of the present day dam. In the late 1840’s Peter Bennett, Sr. and his family settled in the same valley but on the other side of the Niangua River. Peter purchased from the government the land that...

  In the 50 years since 1970, the world’s population has doubled while the number of chickens we eat has increased nearly 7-fold, from   11 billion to 74 billion . So, why do we eat so much chicken? According to the  National Chicken Council , it started with a mistake in 1923. Like many rural Americans, Cecile Steele of Ocean View, Delaware kept a small flock of chickens as a source of eggs. The chickens would eventually become food once their egg-laying days were over. However, one day the local chicken hatchery  accidently delivered 500 birds , 10 times more than Steele had ordered. Apparently, a clerk had written 500 on the order instead of 50. To give you a sense of the size of the mistake, in the early 1900’s the largest farms only had  ~300 chickens . Clearly, Steele didn’t need that many eggs so she decided to raise the chickens for meat. Less than five months later, she sold them for a huge profit. Eureka! A new business was born. Steele’s husband quit ...

  I've been thinking a lot about grace lately. Seems like when we need it the most is when we think about it. I've been grumpy and petulant this week. Most of it due to pain and/or the medicine I take for the pain. But I thank you all for your patience in putting up with me (and your grace) So many of you hurt, also, and much more than I do, and God chastises me when I complain too much. Here is a lengthy devotion/short sermon I wrote some years ago about grace. *********************************** I turned on PBS to watch Gospel music tonight. Featured group was The Martins, definitely one of my very favorites. Their close family harmony is absolutely angelic. The theme turned out to be grace and I did a lot of thinking as I Iistened to them sing. I can’t believe I missed so much of the message of grace in my early spiritual life. Maybe it was there in the sermons and I just missed it. The Church of God is what is known as a holiness church, where you are not suppose...

     ·  Shared with Your friends Today's LDR column: Straight From The Hart Joan Rowden Hart About 55 to 60 years ago, at this time of the year, I was really in my element. It was time for school to start and I was always so excited. It had nothing to do with new clothes. I remember the first time I became aware that some kids bought new clothes for the beginning of school. I was in the Joe Knight drugstore with some of my friends where we were having a coke after registering for school at the junior high. Some other girls came in and were showing off all their new clothes and shoes. I remember thinking that was rather shallow since it had nothing to do with my perception of the first day of school. So it wasn’t about clothes. It was about school supplies, especially notebooks and paper. I enjoy Marie Brown’s “Stoutland Tidbits” column which appears in the Wednesday paper along with mine each week. I don’t know her, but sometimes I think we must have been twin...

  My Facebook posts have evolved through the years. I still like to make my friends laugh with a silly story or a joke or a cartoon, or get you caught up in a drama that seemingly could only happen to me, or just sharing a memory in a special photo, but more and more I am trying to post words that will inspire you or encourage you. I also like to post informational articles about subjects that might interest you - something you didn’t have time to read or watch. And you know of course that I love to read and especially write poetry so I will share lots of "rhyme and reason" with you, too. My days revolve around the computer, doing research on subjects in which I am interested and want to pass on to you, or surfing Facebook to keep up with my friends. I am not lazy. Unless you are pretty much confined to one room, as I am, you probably can’t understand how very much I would like to be able to walk through my house and clean up the clutter and wipe off the dust and put away the...