I suppose I have to do this to bring everyone up to speed. Really, I wanted to write something funny and glib this week. However, in addition to not feeling funny and glib, I know a lot of you have been concerned for Marsha and myself as our marriage has now officially ended. And I came away with some blog worthy thoughts in the process. If you don’t wish to read about it, then don’t. I certainly will not be offended. However, there is nothing bad here, no shouting or name calling, no mean language. Just a few thoughts.

          First, my GPS. If there are any bad thoughts in my head, they are for my GPS. For my GPS I will use feminine gender pronouns because my GPS has a female voice. I originally bought her about eight months ago. I don’t like the things, but sometimes they are handy. So far, just to see if she works, I used her to get to Walmart in Warsaw, Indiana and to a doctor’s office two weeks ago, also in Warsaw. Not really a challenge. She worked OK. Cleveland, however, was another matter. I know the route from Indiana to Cleveland pretty well and I knew where I was going that first night to spend the night, although I had never been there. It was just off the highway, not a problem. The GPS did fine until we were approaching the exit, but she was not advising me to get off. We had been driving for several hours and I supposed she was napping, but when I got off, she immediately began to tell me that I had gotten off at the wrong exit. Once I was headed to the motel, she became insistent that I needed to turn back. When I pulled into the parking lot, she was imploring me to turn around. I mean, she would not shut up. I had this reaction with the funeral home’s GPS in Pittsburgh years ago, but I really was turned around then. Once I got to my room, I had a long talk with the GPS, but she did the female thing and just sat there all silent and moody. The next day I put in the address for the courthouse knowing I was not going directly to the courthouse. Cleveland has some pretty neat neighborhoods and I know a lot of them and I just wanted to take the tour. I wasn’t really thinking of the GPS or that she was going to be angry when I deviated from her instructions, but boy, did she get angry. All I was hearing was ‘RECALCULATING, RECALCULATING!’ I explained there were places I wanted to revisit, but she was pretty annoyed. In fact, once I made a right hand turn on Bishop Road. As I was completing the turn, I realized that at some point in the last four years, Bishop had become a one-way street and I was turning the wrong way. The GPS, in the voice of a woman who has just had it proven that the male in her life is a total idiot, said, “You have now turned the wrong way on a one-way street.” Of course, I had to turn around, but I was laughing so hard it was hard to find a place to turn. And then, once I quit the tour, I began to follow her directions to the courthouse. I have been to this courthouse on funeral home business dozens of times, but I was in the neighborhoods and needed her help getting there. She got me to the courthouse just fine, but insisted that it was on the south side of Lakeside Avenue when it is actually on the north side. The differences between the modern buildings on the south side and the two block long, one block deep 100 year old marble Cuyahoga County Courthouse on the north side are quite striking, but she was absolutely sure, once again, that I was an idiot. Actually, I think she was stressed out. Cleveland can do that. After I left the courthouse and got back in the car and fired the GPS up again, I just hit the HOME icon. I am telling the truth, she seemed to sound relieved when she said, “Please drive to the highlighted route.” She was very pleased to get home.

          The second thing I came away with is that we live in a society that is moving toward ruin. Cuyahoga County is home to 1.3 million people. Compare that to Wabash County’s population of 33,000 people. Actually, Cuyahoga County used to be much larger. As manufacturing jobs went away the county and the city of Cleveland dwindled. Now, much of the area is in decay, both physically and morally. I got to the courthouse just after noon for a 2:30 appointment and, once I got away from the entrance, I became depressed to see how run down the building had become. On the third floor I found the room I wanted and sat down to wait.

          There are family court judges, but the divorce portion of family court is so busy that they do not use actual judges. They use magistrates. These are attorneys who have as their sole job the task of making sure all the ‘i’s have been dotted and all the ‘t’s have been crossed. We sat before the magistrate for 10 minutes of our 2:30 to 3:00 appointment. A few questions and boom, 44 years of marriage were wiped off the books. There are three magistrates covering divorces for family court in Cuyahoga County. They have 30 minute sessions all day every day. That is all they do. Process divorces. I was there two and a half hours early and it was very sad.

          But another thing I saw as I sat waiting was how filthy the place was. Built at a time when things were built to look grand, the doors had patterns on them and scroll work in the marble walls and door frames all around. Once beautiful, in 2019 you can see the caked in dirt and residue from years of neglect. Cracks in the marble look to be growing. In the time I was there no one came by to sweep floors or empty trash cans. In fact, the only maintenance/janitor type I saw was a guy standing at the security desk drinking coffee and talking to the security guard as I was coming in. Society seems to be like that everywhere. Morally corrupt and with a lack of care and compassion.

          And then, I received a lesson on change. I didn’t recognize Marsha at first when she walked up to me in the hall. She is now a blond. I had never seen that look. It didn’t look bad. It kind of looked unnatural, but I am sure that is just because I had never seen her that way. Also, she is getting remarried on the 19^th of October, which should be enough time for the divorce decree document to get to her and for them to get their marriage license. To her, this was just another step into a new life.

But the final thing I learned that day was that when people are praying for you, you can feel it. Actually, I feel it every Sunday when I preach and there is someone in the prayer room. But this was different. Hundreds of miles away in the middle of the day and still I knew that people were lifting me up. Pretty cool.

High points? No traffic problems. No car problems. Had a great breakfast on Monday morning. Passed a tornado in a field a few hundred yards away on the way home. Got to drive around Cleveland. I wasn’t a bad trip overall.

 However, it was sad. The hardest thing I have ever done. Now that it is over, though, there is a sense of stress being relieved. I feel better physically that I have in a while. This ordeal will never be fully over, but the impact is in the past, if you know what I mean. Life will go on.

 I have a very big personal day coming up next week and I intend to enjoy it. I haven’t enjoyed very much in the last year, but that changes as of now!

 Blessings.

          I indulged myself a bit this morning. I read Mary’s blog first thing. I don’t normally do that. It is Friday and I have much to do. In fact, my blog is normally done over a period of two or three days. Not constantly over two or three days, but kind of like letting a plant grow over a period of weeks or months. But this week my mind is hard to bring into focus. Too much of a personal nature going on. So, I read Mary first and it got me to thinking.

          Without getting into what she wrote (if you want to know what she wrote, go to her blog and read it at https://mary-marysmoments.blogspot.com/) she discussed the difference between weeds and grass. She brings it into the Spiritual realm and it is quite interesting. But with my scatter gun brain this week, my mind took off in another direction.

          Growing up on a farm, I was taught that weeds were our mortal enemy. If you let them get ahead of you, they would destroy the corn and the soybeans and choke off the garden. Meanwhile, we had a couple of acres of rolling lawn of mostly Kentucky blue grass. Beautiful stuff. Only I didn’t see it like my parents saw it. We didn’t spray our fields so we had to run the cultivator through them. Each field was cultivated once a week, which kept me busy all week. This was done until the corn or beans got high enough that the cultivator might damage the crop. By that time, the weeds were not going to be a problem. I have two sisters and their job was to hoe the garden, so I didn’t care about those weeds. The grass in the lawn was another matter. My father didn’t believe in riding mowers, so I mowed the grass with a hand mower. You were walking either up hill or down hill. Given my choice, I would have rather ridden on a tractor attacking the weeds than pushing a hand mower up and down grass covered hills.

          Growing older, I began to notice other things. My mother worked hard in her flower gardens to make her blooms beautiful. Meanwhile, wild weeds often had small blooms that were just as beautiful. I pointed this out to Mom one day and was surprised at her reaction, which was not good. After that, being the good and loving son, I pointed this out quite often. Always got the same reaction from my mother. I think I drove her crazy.

          And, just for the record, who made the decision that a pansy is a flower and a dandelion is a weed? I have read that the dandelion is part of the sunflower family. You can eat parts of it, use other parts to make tea and still other parts to make wine. And it is abundant. Pansies take time and work and all you can do with a pansy is look at it. Personally, a dandelion filled yard is a welcoming yard.

          Anyway, we are talking about weeds. The area I come from is hilly with some deep valleys. There is also a vast difference in soil content. Just in our township, the area from Lake Erie to North Ridge Road is all sandy. Between North Ridge Road and Middle Ridge Road it is a mix of sand and loam and is very fertile. From Middle Ridge Road to South Ridge Road it is a combination sandy, loam and clay, also very fertile. Mostly, we farmed between North Ridge Road and South Ridge Road, although we did have a forty acre field north of North Ridge. Being hilly, we didn’t have a lot of acreage together like here, but the fields were apart from one another. It was just different. And, while there were differences in the soil and fields running from north to south, there were also differences running from east to west. I grew up in Lake County. The next county to the east was Ashtabula County. And, right at the county line, the soil changed yet again. Ashtabula County is Ohio’s grape country. Wines and jellies and juices and some of the best grapes you could ever eat come from Ashtabula County. The wines win awards against Napa Valley brands and even win awards in international competition. A large portion of Welch’s jams and jellies and juices come from Ashtabula County. Many of the rolling hills in Ashtabula County are covered with vineyards rather than corn and soybeans while in Lake County you would be hard pressed to find a single grape arbor. Another wonderful thing no one really knows about unless you live among grapes is that every year, right about now, the grapes are coming in and the smell is amazing. And between the rows in the vineyards are weeds. Mowed and kept short, but weeds.

Mary’s blog set me to thinking about the difference between weeds and grass, which led over to the soil from north to south back in Northeast Ohio, which led my fevered brain to think about how odd it is that on the west side of Countyline Road the soil is rich and good for crops and on the east side of Countyline Road it is wonderful grape soil. And I should finish this travelogue by pointing out that on the eastern side of Ashtabula County to the Pennsylvania state line and on into Pennsylvania is apple country and the home of apple cider donuts. Ooooooooooooooooooo!

You see, when a person’s mind is fractured it can go in a dozen different directions. And there is still one more major wrinkle in this mindless wandering.

I pastored in Geneva, Ohio for years. Geneva is in Ashtabula County and is actually where most of the grapes are grown. For many years, Coca Cola had a bottling plant in Geneva. They didn’t bottle Coke, though. They bottled Welch’s grape juice and apple juice and peach juice. Big operation, lots of people worked there. And they had offices and labs and such like places that needed cleaning. For a while when we first went to Geneva, I needed a part time job I could do at night and they needed someone to clean these places. So, I got a part time job at the bottling plant.

You cleaned the front offices, then you walked through the darkened plant to the labs in the back of the building and cleaned those. It was a long walk through the darkened rows of machines and equipment. It never bothered me. I was never afraid that someone might be there. Mostly my thoughts centered on when the church was going to be able to afford me full time. (Which actually happened pretty quickly, much to their surprise.)

But then one night, one o’clock in the morning, I knew I was being watched. I was about halfway through the plant when I felt it. Eyes. Someone was watching me as I walked through. I was suddenly alert. My pace slowed as I scanned through the plant, although other than distant EXIT signs there was no light. I reached the labs and set to work cleaning them, but my mind wouldn’t rest. No one was supposed to be in there, so if someone was, they were up to no good. I locked the lab doors behind me. I cleaned and swept and mopped in pretty quick order and then gathered my cart and set out for the main offices. Walking through te dark I was straining my eyes to see anything. Then, I came around a particularly large machine and in the gloom I saw him. My height. All I could see was his silhouette. I didn’t know who it was, but I knew he didn’t belong and I figured I was in danger. I lashed out with a right that had all my strength behind it and I nailed him on the chin. He went straight down and I turned on my flashlight. It was a grisly sight.

Lying on the floor, not making a sound, was an old time heavy cardboard cutout of a Coca Cola deliveryman. What made it grisly was that I had knocked his head clean off. It was the kind of thing you might have seen somewhere in the 1940s advertising Coke. Why it was there, in a juice bottling plant, I don’t know. But I figured it had some age and was therefore valuable. I stood him up and retrieved his head and tried to tape it on with electrical tape. All I got was a jaunty Coke delivery guy who looked like he was walking with a broken neck. I hurried up to the main offices and checked out, figuring I would get a call the next day. I never did and two weeks later I was able to quit, so I never did find out what it was all about.

          There is a moral here……Never, ever get me started on weeds.     

          It has only been eighteen years. The country was blindsided by a cowardly man who somehow managed to manipulate his ‘followers’ to do the nasty work he was afraid to do himself. Fly planes into towers and kill people. It was a statement. If they just wanted to kill a bunch of people, they could have flown just one plane into an NFL stadium on gameday and 10s of thousands would have died. But that wouldn’t have been a big enough statement. But, take out the twin towers and the Pentagon and whatever the target was for the plane the passengers tried to retake and that crashed in Pennsylvania. That was a statement.

          As a nation, we rose to the occasion. I remember the shock and grief, but it was mixed with a growing pride. People running away from the falling buildings, as they should have been doing, but police and firefighters and EMTs running towards the buildings to try and save lives. At the Pentagon, the generals and colonels and admirals and captains and staffers who had all grown comfortable in their roles in the biggest office building in the world all of a sudden reverted to the soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines they had started out as in their military lives. A man from the community I pastored in was visiting the Pentagon with his wife. Their son had just been transferred there and they were walking down a hall when that plane slammed into the building. This man told me that immediately military efficiency took over. He told me that if there was any panic, he didn’t see it. The entire nation was energized. Less than a year before a hotly contested presidential contest had divided the country. (Remember Florida’s hanging chad problem?) But, suddenly, the Republican president was accepted as the President of all the United States. And we were united.

          Eighteen years later. Where are we?

          A grossly divided country. Personally, I have no problem with lawmakers who are Muslim, so long as they recognize and promote American values and ideals. What we have are Islamic lawmakers who want to install Islamic law. I have no problem with people who disagree with me politically. That is what we are built upon. But when those people would rather see me dead than at the ballot box, then that is a problem. And when a major news source, in their remembrance of a national tragedy just eighteen years after the fact, never mentions that the planes that were flown into the twin towers and the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania that the hijackers were radical Islamics are engaging in a history rewrite, that is just wrong. Their reporting made it sound as though the planes did the attack, just as their reporting makes it sound as though it is the gun’s fault in a mass shooting.

          Eighteen years later. Where are we?

          We are in a bad way. Eighteen years ago we rallied behind the flag. Nothing wrong with that, not at all. But more was needed. There were voices calling out for it, but those voices were mostly ignored. However, if those voices had been heeded, even just a little bit, we would be living in a different country.

           It is common in our country to hear someone shout, “We have the right!” And that is true. This is the United States of America. We have rights. A video is out there of American children whacking away at a piñata, seeking to break it open so that they could get to the candy inside. The piñata was made to look like the president of the United States. The parents of the children stood around shooting video and laughing and cheering on their little ones as they taught the lesson of disrespect. But they have that right. Another video. A FedEx driver heroically shoulders his way into the middle of a protest to save an American flag from being burned. He had a right to do so and, apparently now, the protester had the right to burn the flag. We all have rights, or think we do. But we have neglected the most important right of all. The very thing that would have really changed things eighteen years ago.

I know I go on and on about this, but I am a Christian first and foremost. If I am a good Christian I will be a good American. So, the Bible is my one essential in life. I read the Bible daily and I also read the Constitution of the United States through yearly. The precepts in the Constitution emerge from the Bible. And this I find in the Word of God;

          2 Chronicles 7:12-15---Then the LORD appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: "I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Why have we turned our backs on being humble before the Lord? Why have we turned our backs on praying to Him and seeking Him out? Why have we turned our backs on righteous living and instead chosen evil? If we had listened to those voices crying out eighteen years ago to turn back to Him, we would not be in the mess we are in now.