Straight From The Hart

  This tree will never die. Like all of God’s creation, it is eternal.    It was planted long ago.  The man whose family built this house told us it was here when the foundation was being laid.  It grew from a hickory nut which contained the seed of many trees before it, and they likewise contained the seeds of many years prior to that.  Can this tree trace its history back to Genesis?  Interesting thought. Throughout the years I have known its shade and beauty - 42 of them as I write this - it has been more than generous with its leaves, providing a green canopy over my head as I  walked from the side door out to the driveway sheltering me from the spring rains. It lit up the sky outside my office windows every beautiful sunny day of late summer and early autumn, like a thousand candles aglow.  As autumn hastened on, it would slowly drop its leaves, exposing the dark skeleton of its strength and resilience. I was always fascinated by the spi...

  How many of you remember the Gold Fire military exercises which took place in Lebanon and surrounding counties in the fall of 1964?  Sometimes vague memories like this just kind of creep out of the mists of my memory from time to time.  I don’t know what triggered it this time, but I was curious enough to follow through with some research. I went to the Facebook group page which houses a lot of school and area memories because it is written by Lebanon school alumni who are close to my age.  I brought up the subject there, and thought I would share some of their memories with you in this column.   Milan and I lived in a little house on North Adams and occasionally would see one of the soldiers running through the yard but apparently they were much more visible out in the county. Gold Fire was a simulated battle exercise between the Ozark and Sioux forces during U.S. Strike Command’s Joint Exercise held in Southern Missouri in November 1964.  It appears fro...

Sunday  Morning Musings Of A Meandering Mind. Mornings are my thinking time. Once my daily routines begin, I don’t have time to think. And mental exhaustion sets in close to midnight and I’m too tired to think. So this morning I was thinking about the beginnings of my ministry. Seems so long ago. I was ordained in 1986 while I was working for New York Life and thought I could do both. Wrong!!!! Both are very intensive mentally and time consuming in process. So I eventually resigned from New York Life and took my first full-time pastorate at the First Church of God in Farmington, but I had already become acquainted with the duties which were necessary in addition to teaching and speaking which were my first love. I remember my first wedding. Some insurance clients wanted me to marry them down at their property on the Niangua River. I told them I would have my pastor do it, but when I asked him he reminded me I could do it. I was scared to death, afraid it wouldn’t “take”...

  SNAPSHOTS IN THE MIND Memory is such a funny thing Those snapshots in the mind Of smells and sounds of childhood scenes Those days long left behind. The dusty walk down the long, long lane The flowers along the way Where daisies and weeds intertwine in the ditch And grasshoppers love to play. The country school where I learned to read And crayons were a good source of art The spelling match, and arithmetic, And poems we learned by heart. Yes, the camera of the mind is a funny thing Those snapshots of the past Captured one day and locked away Where our memory holds them fast. Written by Joan Rowden Hart, 12.17.01 Copyright Joan Hart 2002

  Civility is the buzzword of the day, especially in the political arena.  We have certainly come a long way from the example our Founding Fathers set as they worked to bring this nation together. Our first president was known to have quite a temper.  But Gouverneur Morris, one of his friends and political contemporaries, described him as having  the “tumultuous passions that accompany greatness,” but also noted that his passions were “controlled by his stronger mind.” He worked on controlling his temper by copying a translated version of a French book of etiquette, and he routinely practiced  these principles  in his political and social life.  They included the following which he called his Rules of Civility: Read no letters, books, or papers in company unless there is a necessity for doing so in which case you must ask leave.   Come not near the books or writings of anyone so as to read them unasked, also look not nigh when another is writing a...

  Random Thoughts on Love and Marriage, by Joan Rowden Hart. I have performed many weddings since I was first ordained 34 years ago.  My first wedding was outside at a resort near the Niangua River.  My last was outside at a Lebanon park.   I probably will never do another one because of my health problems. In between I have performed weddings at my home, at other homes, in churches, and even inside the state prison at Farmington.  I have always felt that the traditional wedding ceremony and vows were much more profound than most people realized, even the bride and groom. The promises made to have and to hold, from this day forward; for better, for worse; for richer or for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish until separated by death, are not meant to be taken lightly. My husband and I were married in 1963.  Fifty-six years of marriage is not all that unusual now if you will notice as you read the anniversary notices in this newspaper e...

  First Editions written by Joan Rowden Hart  in 2017. In the living books on the shelves of the eternal library of life, we are all first editions.  No one has ever been exactly like us since the world began, and there will never be anyone exactly like us even until the end of time. Our book was nothing but blank pages when the Great Author of life conceived us in His mind, numbering both the  days of life we would have (see Psalm 139)  and numbering the hairs on our head (see Matthew 10). He knows our story from beginning to end, and the narrative is unlike that of anyone else, and to confirm that fact He stamped our unique fingerprint on the tips of our fingers.  Those are our copyrights. Then he sent us out into the world, where we began to fill the book of our life with our own story, making decisions which will impact our destiny for eternity. Every page is a clean slate.  Every dawning is a new day and as darkness descends amid the night time so...