Each day, I do a check out of my engine. Check the fluid levels. Make sure that the equipment is in place and has not been lost. I reset paperwork. Order parts. Arrange for repairs. Change the batteries. Refill the water jug.
Its the water jug that apparently is one of those things of great debate. I, for the life of me, do not know why. The oppoeite shift at my station is so triffling, and worthless, that the water jug never gets touched. Since I have been here, taking care of my engine, I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I have came in and it appeared that those clowns changedthe water, and added ice to the jug.
Yet, apparently, someone used a waterhose to refill the jug some time in the past, and it brought protests - from the g uys who never touch the damned thing. Leaves an after taste, they said. And, to boot one of the genius's came up with some fun fact, that they heard from a friend, who read it on the internet, that drinking water from a water hose is not good for you.
What?
Waterhoses were god-sends to us, when we were kids. Instant water sourses, as long as you let the hot water run out first (the sun would heat up any standing water in the hose. I drank a river of water from the hose at my parents house. I'm still kicking.
Fruit is bad for you now. Unless you damn near run it thru a wash cycle. We kids grew up on the local fruit in our neighborhood. Our yard had a sour green apple tree. You could pick up an apple on any givenday off of the ground around the tree. Or you could toss a bat up into the tree, and knock down fresh ones. Belly aches from green apples? Nah. We ate so many of the damned things, we became immune to that. Anothe kid had a peachtree in his yard, and we had a secondary food source, with a plum tree. We never ate junk food at home. Oh, we'd bike up to Grimes or to the 7-11 and buy candy, slurpees, but that was secondary to our steady diet of green apples.
Playing with guns is the worse thing you can let your kid do, these days. Oh really? We played 'Army' all the time. With pop guns, we'd load up with mud. The occasional cap gun. and with dirt clods for grenades (shot with sling shots, if we were firing artillery). We stormed the beaches of Normandy. Tredged thru the hedgerows. Fought the japs on Iwo. We played sniper in the trees (and tree houses). Sewer culverts were pill boxes (but a well thrown dirt clod would wipe out the squad). Piles of leaves, that we raked before burning in the curb, was the best cammo anyone could ask for.
Playing daredevil can hurt you. I guess. If you let it. Every kid, to a man, was an expert bike mechanic. Had to be. Or you walked. Some had single speeds. I had a three speed, abit large framed bike with a banana seat, and hippie bars. Others had 20' spider bikes. One guy had a cool looking bike that had a spring in the forks. Heavy to pedel and hard to ride though. We jumped ditches, curbs. Played tag. Had slide contests (though if you slid thru the tire tread and got to the tube, the bike mechanic stuff came in to play) We'd wreck. Occasionally we'd tear something up (bent fork. Broken rim). For a while, we went thru a phase where extra bikes had the front forks sawed off, jammed up on the forks of a second bike, making a chopper out of it. Notice I said nothing about welding/tacking the extra forks. So, if you lifted the front wheel, you ran the very real risk of the entire front end falling apart. We even had a kid turn bike thief one summer which started a neighborhood vs neighborhood war, that went on, until the adults got involved with it.
No kid sould ever feel ike they won or lost at anything. Everyone tries. What utter bullshit. Home run derby was played in our street. If you did not hit a home run (ball was caught, you swung and missed, or it did not gofar enough) you rotated positions. Street football was between the light poles. 2 hand touch, or if you stepped off of the street at the curb. When it got too hot to play in the middle of theday, we'd sit on the porch and play monopoly. marathon, massive pot on Free Parking monopoly games. We ran thru a couple of games each summer (we'd literally wear the money and cards out). We dug forts in the ditches for us kids, and minature ones for our GI Joe's. Played lawn darts and no one gave a second's thought of getting impailed on one of them. Same stink stuff with chemistry sets. Grew protozoa for my microscope. Built the Sears tower with an erector set. Fort Whatever, with Lincoln logs. Ran scale miles of Hot Wheel track over and under damn near everything. Rain made puddles, which were fun to jump in. Even more fun to slide thru on your bike.
No kid should go hungry. We never did. A mayo sandwich (or a onion and mustard one)went a long way. Or a handful sized hunk of velveeta was heaven. Mom's handmade lemonaide never tasted better, even though it had enough sugar in it, to light us up for hours each night. Occasionally a kid would come up with chips or other junk food. You hungry? Grab a piece of leftover cornbread. Or bisquits. The occasional cookie. We cooked french fries over the oil heater grate in the center hallway. You had to leave your door open to get heat in the bedrooms. Or the A/C, if dad left it on at night.
Kids watch way too much TV. I grew up listening to the radio. Started out with a crystal set. Far away ball games, in far away cities. Old country music shows. My dad was one of the first in our neighborhood to get a color TV. Back then, shows were about 50/50. Some in color (like Disney). The majority of the ones we kids were allowed to watch, were not. Sometimes the neighbors wouldcome over and watch Ed Sullivan - everyone watched Ed on Sunday nights. On Saturday afternoon, the Saturday Afternoon Major Leage Baseball Game of the Weekcame on. Mantle, Maris, Berra, or the Dodgers with Kaufax, or the Giants with Mays. Baseball games were special things back then. During the day, mom would not even let us in the house, except to go to the bathroom. We ate our lunches on the porch - interupting the mid day monopoly game. We were just not ever inside, unless it was raining/storming.
Kids run wild. They have no structure. Really? We knew our boundries. North, south, east and west. Basically it was as far as your parents knew the neighbors well enough. Sometimes it was the length of a long bike ride (if going to the 7-11 or Grimes). But all of the other parents knew you by name, and knew your parents, and their phone numbers. So, if you showed your ass, they'd just pick up the phone. We had one rule. Only one. Be home before the street lights came on. Don't make your parents have to look for you. You'd hear the occasional kids name yelled out in that long, sing-song voice that parents seem to know from birth. And an answer of I am coming. Or else. We did not take anything fron strangers. But strangers in the neighborhood had already registered on the parents watchdog radar - they knew about them before we did. If you were staying over at another kids house for dinner, they already knew, due to the mom's phone mafia.
I had no idea. I was in danger? Did my parents mistreat me? Was I neglected? Was I one heartbeat from being a social workers statistic?
No. I drank out of water hoses. Rode a bike like a maniac. Ate green apples all the while balancing what they might do to our bowels. Girls still had cooties. Dogs were cool. Box turtles were cooler. I lived as free as a bird, within the confines of a very structured set of rules. I was self sufficient - as long as I coould keep my bike tubes from leaking, and I could find enough bottles to turn in for the nickel deposit - to keep myself in comics. The soles of our feet were like leather, from walking on the hot tar/graveled roads in my neighborhood. We had dirt everywhere, but nothing that a hated bath would not fix. We burned leaves in the street gutter (a smell that to thisday as an adult, I still love). Halloween was heaven in the fall. No one even thought about putting anything but candy in your bag. Christmas was everything. The Sears Wish Book did not stand a chance.
Come to think of it, maybe all of that whining about the water jug isn't the most important thing in the world anymore...
I love russian gals. The way they talk. Their utter incomprehension of the english language. Makes for a lot of fun.
So, here I am. Wandering around in Potomac Mills, looking for the head. Like a moron, I had already walked past it. I stopped at one of those shove stuff in your face center of the aisle pain in the ass I already have a cell phone and don't need another one, no, I am a man and I do not wear perfune storefront places, and little Miss Vodka looks at me with those doe eyes, and asks in something closer to english than the dothead at my local 7-11, but way past any cab driver, 'can I help you?'
Sure. Trying to find the restroom, I answer. She says, 'for 5 dollars, I will tell you where it is.'. I reply, 'for 5 dollars, I'll pee right on the floor in front of your (see above) storefront.'
I guess that did not register in her soon to be a stripper (GD Anthony and his russian stipper impression...'you want me to make the sexy for you?') mind, as she pointed out the bathrooms, without any cash being exchanged. She'll get to the cash being exchanged part of her life, sooner, than later.
Off I go. Leaving Oxsana Porsche in the dust.
How did I get myself in this perdicament in the first place? Oh, I promised the MIL that anytime she wanted to go to Potomac Mills, I'd take her (and the XYL). D-Day came, and there we went.
I managed to sneak in a trip to HRO to pick up something I needed for the new radio I had just bought at Dayton, so, at that point my day was done in my point of view.
The GAWDS smiled on me, for a change, because as I walked in I ran across a place that rented shopping carts. I weighed the options. Carry dozens of bags, till my hands went numb (not even counting my backpack) or look like a tourist, pushing this dumbass cart. I happily gripped my diet Dew in my non-numb hand, as I pushed the cart from point A to Point B, then back to Point A, then on to Point C....
I long had lost the use of my freshly adjusted back, with the awful hotel bed, so if I stopped moving, My back tightened up so much, that it took a wing and a prayer, for me to even stand up.
From one end, to the other, and then back again, we trundled thru the crowds of angry people. Angry? Seemed to me that the majority of folks who walked by me speaking in their jibberish looked and sounded angry. Like, really angry. Unless we start talking like professional wresslers (lets see if anyone gets that goof), I don't get it...
I now know why the heathens won the elections this fall. Every Mr. and Mrs. I Hate America, came by me with one or two baby carriages, or multiple kids. All jabbering in something other than english. From the shirts and hats I saw, Jesus has been replaced by the new (and improved) Messiah Obama.
And, IMHO, I saw the dumbest thing - at least in my way of thinking - I had seen in quite sometime. Let me, prep this by saying, if I move to Mexico, I will learn spanish. France? I'll learn french. Compton? Ebonics.
There at the head of the food court was a Rosetta Stone storefront. Selling kits to learn every imaginable language..but...need I finish the sentence?
I quietly grinded my teeth and I walked away.
I figure it'll be in my lifetime. Certainly, in the next, that the heathens offically take America over. For F's sake, we're encouraging it. Oh, we;ll learn some gibberish language of yours. Don't even think of learning the language of the country you Hate..
So, I'll never be Mr. Diversity. Nor will I be Mr. Multi-cultural. I will not even be I speak something other than english guy. I do need to be Mr get on Wikipedia to see if he can figure out the scarves over the head (around the neck. Covering the head, but not the face. Eyes only thing visable) thing, or the red dot in the middle of the forehead guy.
That has be completely stumped...
I hope that Oxsana Porsche takes to her stripper lessons. She looks to have potential..
Been killing the day, playing Domestic Goddess. Clothes. Running the vacumn (funny how a joke about any man worth his salt would have given a woman a vacumn already, went over like a lead baloon. But I digress...). Unpacking. Tooling around on Myspace and Facebook. Listening to the XM radio. Just unwinding..
I think I have went down this path before. Hundreds of time, with dullard managers at various work places. Idealistic emptyheaded fools who fight Quixotic politically. Camp followers. The trendy. The too hip for the room. The stupid and the plain retarded.
I've changed so much over the years. As a teenager growing up in the 60's, I started out as a liberal. I bought into all of that flower power crap. It drove my parents to distraction. I eventually came to my senses, and slowly turned to a more conservative slant. And now, I change again, taking on a more libertarian point of view.
I've also changed into really understanding that every action should have a reaction. In so much, as stupid is, as stupid does, as an example, if one really thinks that one should be allowed to ride a motorcycle without a helmet - so be it. However, if one cracks their head open like a melon, it is reasonable for you to be responsible for that action, and if the life insurance policy you have denies the claim, well, you knew better. That ones gonna be a tough one. Too many generations of people now who have been taught there are no repercussions for their actions. Therefore, no one has to take any responsibility for anything.
I have to remind myself, that as the theory goes, we have a Constitution, which grants us many rights. It started out as a check and balance to a government, that the framers just knew was going to get out of control. It did, and now we have a real mess on our hands.
As much as I hate the actions of some - say one of my favorites - flag burners - I have to defend thir right to do this, as freedom of expression/speech. It makes me hate their very lives, and it makes me wish death and destruction upon them and their families. Yet, I stand and take it. The flag that I saluted in the military, is the said same one I have to watch burn. Checks and balances.
So, when someone comes along, too stupid for words, it puts one in one of those delimma's. Started out with a flurry of e-mail messages (nothing like forwarding the juicy ones to each other) on Facebook: Attack/get this guy. I did not open them up because I always have a in-box full of them every day. As I started reading the news scroll, it made me go back to the mail.
Some one. I'll just let it go at that. Had named their Mafia Wars player 'Niggah Hater'. And it stirred up a hailstorm of Political Correctness indignancy. I truely believe it started a feeding frenzy. or it started one of those impression stampeded: if I do not show my indignity, then someone may think I support this. No matter. It caused the message to be sent out dozens of times.
Hmm...are these said, same folks mortified at the rap music I can listen to, 24/7 on XM, where the other spelling of that word (along with [laughing] 'nappy headed' et al) are every 4th or 5th word in the songs there? Are they in a lather, if they walk the 1/4 mile with me, to the tip of the spear, in the Section 8 housing, where they can, at their leisure be given up close and personal lessons on the proper, and improper use of that word?
Doubtful.
I got better things to do. I expend my energy these days at drivers on cell phones. Some dolt with a 'niggah hater' Mafia Wars account, is way below my radar. Besides, he's just Forrest Gumping, at this point. Oh, the less informed. The band wagon riders. The fence sitters. The too cool for the room types. Liberals. Will crawl out of the woodwork, to express their indignity at the ignorance of this guy.
Isn't it always the case? The very ones whom one would think would support freedom of speech, are the ones trying to control it via Political Correctness? Is it necessarily smart speech? Nah. But, is it 'freedom of speech? You betcha. So, when the PC Police get their dander up, it is so hard for me to take them seriously anymore. There is a word I use for folks like this. 'Niggah' isn't it. Neither is 'Hater'. But, 'Hypoctite' is.
I doubt there is anyone who can remember the last time I used that word. I have no doubt it has slipped out on occasion at some stupid driver. But I have no need for it. The stupid of this world, are way past that anyway. In some sort of twisted logic, if I called you that, you could almost ignore it. If I call you VI, or stupid, perk up. You have MY attention..
I have no use for that kind of stuff anymore. The ignorant of the world may. But, as the bumper sticker said, We come from two different worlds. Mine uses soap and toothpaste".
Be it stupidity. Ignorance. Or Hypocricy. If calling someone/each other that, is your cup of tea. Have at it. Just be ready for the consequences that may or may not come. Me? I just gotta defend your right to speak that way. If you get your ass kicked, in the meanwhile, thats on your shoulders..
Will the PC Police come after me, if I declare myself a 'Liberal Hater'? Wonder how much sleep I will lose tonight worrying about it...
Sometimes, you are so dumbfounded by events, that you can't find the words to make sense of it. Happened to me a year or so ago. We Firemen are social creatures. In as much as we are pretty tightnit group, when it comes to group activities. Things such as dinner tend to be pseudo-family affairs. Shared recipes. Experences. Ass busting.
Every so often, we come up looking for new things to try out on ourselves. Our OCD guy came up with the idea that his mom had this killer recipe and he got her on the phone to get it out of her. A minute or two of conversation, the OCD kicked in, and the yelling and cursing started.
I was so taken by this I became speachless. I'd give anything to have the amount of time it would take to tell my mother that I am doing well. Shes been gone for a long time. I lot my gransmother, father and mother in 25 months, and this guy is cursing his mother? Oh, I will not lie and tell anyone that my relationship with my parents was peaches and creame. I will tell you, that as I got older, and past my ETOH problems,that i matured, and grew to appreciate what they were trying to tell me.
Today is Mother's Day. Stuck at work, as usual, it is just another family gathering that I have missed. The XYL is with her mother and family. I am here with my disfunctional one at the station.
I will never know why this happened, but for some reason I grew up thinking that my birthday was on the 12th. Somehow the wrong date got put on my SSN paperwork, as a teen ager, and I never knew it until I had a tax problem some years ago, and had to run thru the towel line of civil servants that I had to see, to get it corrected.
So, in the way back machine, I was born on Mother's Day all those many years ago. Of course, in the reality of things, my mother labored with me, the day before. In all probability, I was probably the best mothers day present that she could ever have had.
So, today as I read thru the endless Mother's Day messages on Facebook, and the smattering of early birthday wishes, it reminds me of back in the day, they were one and the same.
I suppose I could be charged with retard cruelty. Or something like that. Our rookie is broke as a church mouse. And does not have cable TV, so he has taken to coming into the station on the Tuesday's he is off and watching Rescue Me, with the opposing shift.
Which is the station and shift that one of our Trifecta of Retards works on. And, with his whoever it is complex, he apparently thinks that he can run the kid off. Make him unwelcome in his own station.
This is not sitting well with me at all. Not at all. he's MY rookie, and if anyone is going to make him uncomfortable, it'll be me. But, moreso, I have been instilling in my kids that the Fire Department is tradition, and it is family, and it is brotherhood. Something that the Trifecta cannot wrap his closed mind around.
So, tonight me and the XYL, took the Rookie to Busch Gardens. We just walked around, and took in the sights. When we left, we went to 5 Guys - sent off the appropriate pictures to aggravate the guys who could not be there - and then the Research and Development side of me, kicked in.
I retired from Operations a while back. I no longer do the gags at the Fire Station. I am the guy who thinks them up, and then I send my trainees off to do them for me.
I turned to the kid and told him to call the station, ask them if they minded if he came in later to watch a movie on HBO. Stop. End of sentence.
But, that end of sentence, sent the Trifecta into orbit. I knew that the guys on duty would tell the moron of the call. Baiting the hook. He would set it himself. But the bait did have to be dangled in front of him.
Part two of the goof. I then had the rookie call to another guy, have him call the station and leave word that his phone was acting up and if they would have the rookie call him when he got in. Hook set.
Calls and text's to the guys at the station confirmed my suspicions, that the Trifecta is on orbit.
You did catch that no one is coming by the station, correct? That this moron, who has no idea about family and brotherhood, has self winded like a cheap watch?
Oh, I'll hear about it in the morning. It'll take all I can muster to not laugh out loud, when the story starts to unfold in front of me.
2 little phone calls.
And, that's how you shoot Trifecta's in a barrel...
It's the ten year anniversary of a lot of things in my life. A little more than 12 since I came to my new station. 10 years since the VOLS did anything (National Championship). And ten years (a little more, I guess) than the road I am on was taken.
Has it been that long? The easiest way to gauge time, is to look at a movie date. Such and such movie came out X years ago. Was it that that long ago? Then you think back. That movie came out, and I was where, doing what. Time has a funny way of picking up speed, once it passes you. We live in a day to day world. Sometimes hour to hour, or even minute to minute at times. And, when we look back, with that all-seeing crystal ball, it surprizes me, what I see. I guess I am at the 1/3 part of things. Maybe entering into the 1/4th. Not sure what that future brings. I know that I have 5 more working years in me, in the Fire Department, before they give me a photocopy of a picture of a gold watch, a pat on the back, and directions to the gate. Another 4 and my house, well home that I live in, will be paid off.
Ten years ago, we were under the thumb of the Democrats, with the Rapist-In-Chief, and the ex-First-Yenta, running the country into the ground. I hope and pray that we have only 4 more years of that nightmare before us. I doubt I could stomach 8, and the country will not survive that long.
Ten years ago, I was not speaking to my brother. And I hardly knew my sister and my other brother. A bunch of my uncles and aunts were still alive. And my mother, Vance, Inez, Flancher, Warner, Ailene, Billy Joe were all still with me. Though I had lost my father and grandmother about a year prior to that. My grandfather was still alive - spry, kicking, and raising hell. The aunts and uncles on my mothers side had not back-stabbed me yet.
I still have my old 5 speed Ranger, which I miss terribly. Until the clown on his cell phone ran into the car behind me, which hit me and threw me, and the Ranger into Interstate traffic, where I was hit by a 18 wheeler. The 18 wheeler won.
Ten years ago, Vista was not even a wet spot in Bill Gates pants. My computer ran like a charm. GAWD DAMN Bill Gates to Hell, for Vista.
Ten years ago, I was in the first stages of finding out that GAWD hears your prayers, and He heres your curses. And He is aware when you shake your fist at the sky. And he can take things away from you. Things that you wish you had back.
Ten years ago, the birch tree in the front year had not played havoc with the house yet.
Ten years ago, Beaner was still with us, and I revelled in the 147.400 Beaner 'Repeater'. And Earline still laughed at us, when we whisper talked to Beaner about taking him out to eat stuff he was not allowed to eat according to his doctor. My 3 dozen strong of close radio friends, still held court on a daily basis.
Ten years ago, I was angry. In the midst of a whirlwind of strife, that I could not comprehend. And about to lose my job over it.
Ten years ago, I still wore button down, with badge, uniforms at work. Sweating my ass off in the summertime. Ten years ago, I caught my boss in a bald-faced lie, and it has taken me 10+ years, to get past that.
Ten years ago, I took my second 2 of two major falls off of the Fire Trucks. Sealing my fate, in so much, and destroying my back.
Ten years ago, Jerry and Jessie ruled my house.
Ten years ago, Frank and his family were still good friends with me. Before I caught one of their kids stealing from me. It was the end of the BBS days as I knew them.
Ten years ago, I still had a head full of hair, as I still do today. But the grey in it was a long time coming. Crows feet, wrinkles, and Mean ol Mr. Gravity did not have a solid hold on me yet. Mr. Flab had a decent grip on me though.
Had it been that long? Has ten years passed so quickly, that in retrospect, it seems like a faded memory?
I guess it has. I am looking forward to the next ten years. Maybe I can find the piece of mind I am looking for. And the wisdom and the clarity of thought, to put it to good use.
[Some years ago, while attending a Bible Camp, I heard this song sung to the tune of 'House of the Rising Sun'. It was amazing. Next time you hear that song on the radio, block out the lyrics, and sing Amazing Grace to yourself. You will never be able to hear that song, without thinking about this one]
The amazing grace of Christmas morn
The Christ born in a manger 2,000 years ago lives nonetheless, and continues to change the hearts of sinners and transform the wicked.
This is the real story of Christmas, and nothing illustrates the redeeming power of the message of Christmas with greater clarity than the story of an English slaver named John Newton:
Newton was born nearly 300 years ago into a seafaring family in Liverpool. He was a bright child and his mother was a godly woman whose faith was the crucial element of her life. She died when he was only 7, but at the end of his life, he recalled the sweetest remembrance of childhood, the soft and tender voice of a mother at prayer.
His father married again at once, and John left school four years later to go to sea with his father. He quickly adopted the vulgar life of common seamen, though the memory of his mother's faith remained with him.
"I saw the necessity of religion as a means of escaping hell," he would recall many years later, "but I loved sin."
One day on shore leave, he was seized by a press gang and taken aboard a navy ship, HMS Harwich, where life was even coarser. He ran away, only to be captured and taken back to the Harwich to be put in chains, stripped and publicly flogged. "The Lord had by all appearances given me up to judicial hardness," he would recall. "I was capable of anything. I had not the least fear of God, nor the least sensibility of conscience. I was firmly persuaded that after death, I should merely cease to be."
The captain of the Harwich traded him to the skipper of a slaving ship, bound for West Africa to take aboard a human cargo. "At this period of my life," he later reflected, "I was big with mischief and, like one afflicted with a pestilence, was capable of spreading a taint wherever I went." John's new captain took a liking to him, however, and took him to his plantation on an island off the African coast, where he had taken as his wife a young African princess. The wife was jealous of John's friendship with her husband, and was pleased when it was time for them to sail once more. But John fell ill, and the captain of the slaving ship left John in his wife's care.
The ship was no sooner over the horizon than she ordered him taken from their house and put in a dank hut, gave him a board for a bed and a log for a pillow, leaving him in delirium to die.
Miraculously, he did not die. John was kept in chains, in a cage like an animal, and fed swill from the wife's table. Word spread through the district that a black woman was keeping a white male slave, and many came to watch her taunt him. They threw limes and sometimes stones at him, mocking his misery.
He would have starved if a few of the slaves, brought from the interior to await a ship to take them to the Americas, had not shared their scraps of food with him.
After five years, the captain returned, and when John told him how he had been treated, he branded John a thief and a liar, and when they sailed again, John was treated harshly. Cold and hungry, his health steadily failed. He was given only the entrails of animals butchered for the crew's mess. "The voyage quite broke my constitution," he would recall, "and the effects would always remain with me as a needful memento of the service of wages and sin."
Like Job, he became a magnet for adversity. His ship was wrecked in a great storm, and only their cargo of wood and beeswax saved them. He thought of praying, but despaired that God had mercy left for him after his life of indifference to the Gospel. "During the time I was engaged in the slave trade," he would later write, "I never had the least scruple to its lawfulness." The arrogant and unrestrained blasphemer, the mocker of the faith of others, was driven to prayer. "My prayer was like the cry of ravens, which yet the Lord does not disdain to hear."
He was saved once more, and made his way back to England, where he began to reflect on the mercies God had shown him in his awful life, and he fell under the influence of two great evangelists, George Whitefield and John Wesley. He was born again into a new life in Christ, and began to preach the Gospel he now understood.
When he died at 82, two days short of Christmas in 1807, he left a dazzling testimony to the power of the Christmas story. "I commit my soul to my gracious God and Savior, who mercifully spared and preserved me, when I was an apostate, a blasphemer and an infidel, and delivered me from that state on the coast of Africa into which my obstinate wickedness had plunged me." This is the testimony that, set to music, would become the favorite hymn of Christendom:
"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me;
I once was lost, but now am found
was blind, but now I see.
"'twas grace that taught my heart to fear
and grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear,
the hour I first believed.
"Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come
'tis grace hath brought me safe thus far
and grace will lead me home."
Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.
Source: The Washington Times, Internet edition, 12-25-98 /"www.washtimes.com
imaginative
confused
quixotic
blessed
accomplished
inspired