In the corner there stands a silent salute to my father's life of faith and family.  It is a sun-bleached, sweat-stained, scarred-up boat paddle.
            A few months ago, just after Father's Day, I wrote a column for The Pinnacle about teaching my grandson to fish.  I was surprised at how many folk commented on it!  Good reviews put it amongst my top three, the other two being "If Heaven Ain't A Lot Like Waffle House, Then I Don't Wanna Go," plus "Thanksgiving as Grumpy Gratitude---Remembering George Smith!"
            If you like fishing stories, here's another.
            I grew-up with a cane pole in my hand.  It's about the lowest-tech fishing there is...unless you tied a line to your big toe.
            The annual ritual of the rigging of the rods always was a big deal.  Every spring, my father spread-out these twelve-footers on the floor of the living room and re-outfitted each with hook, line, and sinker...and bobber.  Why he picked a high-traffic area in the middle of the house, I'll never know?
            My father learned fishing from my grandfather.  Papaw always used a boat load of poles...cast in every direction at once! As Papaw's best friend, Raymond Madden said, "John Lamkin didn't go looking for the fish.  It was the fish's job to come looking for him!"  His boat looked like a granddaddy-long-legs spider perched over a bream bed.
            My father and I hauled a small Skeeter boat all over north Louisiana and east Texas.  It was a plywood craft with a pointed bow.  That was Pa's seat.  With a cane pole in his left hand and the boat paddle in his right, he would ease us up to the fishing holes.
            He gripped the paddle low, at its neck, where the narrow shaft widened.  The upper handle rested against his shoulder; and his long arm wrapped around it in-between.  You've seen the technique, I'm sure.
            I saw it thousands of times, over thousands of hours.  On lakes, in ponds, against the wind, and when the water was as still as glass.  With soundless oscillation, slipping back and forth at the boat's bow the paddle pulled then pushed the dark Louisiana water.  It was beautiful.  It was silent art.
            Today, the over 50 year-old boat paddle stands at attention in the corner, retired in dry-dock, a decorated veteran.
            I cannot see it without also seeing him.  Watching him watch an oblong yellow bobber skim along the water's surface, then down, then out of sight, then seen again, singing on a tight line that only the day before lay limp on my mother's living room.
            It was a spiritual thing, really.  A father, a son, boating, floating, upon a mystery, musing about the world below them and its creatures, more ancient than they, but joined at the hip for all eternity.
            When Simon Peter couldn't figure-out what to do with the Resurrection, he went fishing.  The Bible says so.  And when he went fishing, he found Jesus.  And I'm not surprised.

O God of voyages and voyagers,
Thrill us with not yet discovered possibility.
Protect us with the 23rd Psalm's certainty.
Strengthen us when the destination still is distant.
Empty us of stress's poison.
Open us...vacate us...through sabbath's vacation.
Rest us beside still waters and restore our souls.
Teach us through the strangely familiar.
Comfort us through the familiarly strange.
Befriend us through a stranger's kindness.
Connect us with the Holy Spirit's presence.
Keep us as we say daily The Lord's Prayer.
Heal us when tender feet weary.
Bless us when it is time to return...
For only by leaving, can we ever come home.  Amen

 

 

Due to the summer months, there will not be a Pinnacle for July 18-31. The next issue of the Pinnacle will be for August 1-14, 2010.

Mr. and Mrs. Jordan Clark
Request the Honor of Your Presence
At the Marriage of Their Daughter
 
Anna Dorsett
to
Preston Andrews Davis
 
Saturday, the Twenty-Fourth of July
Two Thousand and Ten
at Four O'clock
 
Northside Drive Baptist Church
3100 Northside Drive
Atlanta, Georgia
 
Light Refreshments for
the Church Family Will Follow.
 
 

 

Alice and Gene Ledbetter invites you to see their exhibit of historic olympic, Coco-Cola and other pins produced by their former business, A La Carte Graphics (1970-2000) at the Smyrna Public Library art gallery July 1-August 31, 2010.

Welcome to our new Deacons who begin August 1, 2010!

Angie Moore, and  Jackie Poole.

 

On Sunday, September 12, 2010

will be ordained in the morning service.