My Life Between the Dimensions

  555 It is Monday morning, August 23, 2021. For someone that likes words and the feelings and the emotions that are their companions by association, I find myself unable to comprehend, much less adequately express my intellectual and spiritual state today. I awoke with a compelling sense of urgency not associated with the usual compulsion of a man of my age to visit the porcelain receptacle  of our bedroom bathroom.  I was overwhelmed with and obsessed with the number 555 followed by a capital "A". 555 A.  I was acutely aware that this number came to me in a dream, but was not associated with any other defining memory accompanying the dream. It was also a number I had never thought about or encountered in my life in any meaningful way. Just 555 A. But, it was bigger than the dream.  It stood alone in my consciousness as I first awoke. I knew that I could not begin my day without seeing what the omnipotent virtual musings of the intranet could reveal to me ...

  I took this photo several years ago of Camp Eight Church in the Missouri Ozarks of Wayne County, Missouri.  It was the church of my summers in the 1950's as a boy when staying with my grandmother.  It hasn't changed much.  But, it always now brings back sweet memories.  During that stage of my youthful existence most mornings I would have rather been exploring in the creek and chasing crawdads and minnows and eternally hopeful of finding an arrowhead.. But grandma would have none of that.  Sunday was the Lord's day. We began with the mile walk down the hillside, over the creek, and down that lonely gravel road.  Paper fans, the old piano, gospel hymn after hymn, the preacher in the full path to stroke, his pleas for our salvation so deafening, sweating through his best white shirt, intent on purpose, are images that immediately come to mind.  Of course, there was no air-conditioning at this time, so we sweated right along with him. On those 95 d...

  ONE LIFE TO LIVE For My Grandchildren Without knowing it, thinking about it, or acknowledging it, you will have a legacy.  It does not seem like a big deal now, but how you live your life and what you do with your life is all you will leave behind for those you have known and loved.   Maybe that doesn't matter to you now.  But, as you move through the dimension of this time you have been given, you come to realize that there are people who matter to you more than your own existence....and what they will remember of your time together, and of the life and legacy of your accomplishments, struggles, adventures, love, faith, and charities will be guideposts and beacons of light--- or darkness--- for their time on this mortal plane.  Either you inspire them, or you fail them.   If that doesn't matter to you----then you have wasted your life selfishly. You get this one life.  This one journey.  This one adventure.  You can just dri...

  GRANDMA'S MAILBOX I remember the trip to Grandma Wilson's mailbox as clearly as if it were yesterday instead of roughly 65 years ago. For some reason, I always remember it in the heat of summer. I guess this is because that's when we were there most often. The image I conjure is of the skinny little Keith, shirtless, often shoeless, some other cousin, or more, dressed as frugally as I was opening the rusty front gate and walking down that dusty old road, past the cabin, around the curve to the beckoning, cool waters of the creek. We watched the path the whole way intent on saving the soles of our feet from the rocky protuberances that, once met, resulted in painful yet comical one-footed jigs until the pain subsided. I looked forward to crossing the creek, enraptured by the cacophony of courting frogs and birds and the gurgling of the gentle flow of Reece's Creek over the rocks and gravel of the stream bed. I always paused to stare in hopes of seeing some fishy d...