Freedom's Price

 Better than honor and glory, and History's iron pen, Was the thought of duty done and the love of his fellow-men. ~Richard Watson Gilder


Memorial Day weekend - the weekend that launches summer. Schools are out or will be soon. Seniors are graduating and getting ready to grab life by the horns and see what's next. Some young men and women came to that stage of life during a time of war. Their next thing was joining the military and fighting for freedom and their country. Many gave their all. This sign I saw at the traveling exhibit of the Vietnam War Memorial tells it all. The toll of dead and wounded and missing number in the thousands in every war. 

But a picture like this one brings home that truth in gut wrenching fashion. Row after row of crosses mark the graves of our soldiers who stepped up to the line for their country and did not come home. Tomorrow, Memorial Day, our nation pauses to remember and honor those soldiers.


These heroes are dead. They died for liberty - they died for us. They are at rest.  They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, and the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of storm, each in the windowless Place of Rest.  Earth may run red with other wars - they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death. I have one sentiment for soldiers living and dead: cheers for the living; tears for the dead.  ~Robert G. Ingersoll

My father didn't serve in the army. He was exempted from the military in World War II because he was a farmer, but I've known many men, including two of my uncles and two of my husband's uncles, who did serve our country during that war. Then young men of my generation faced the challenge of the Vietnam War and many served with honor and courage. Still now, men and women are putting themselves in harm's way to defend our way of life and fight for freedom. May we ever keep them in our prayers. 

Do you have family members who have served or who are even now part of the military serving our country? 

Freedom to Write

“Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority--literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.” Ignazio Silone (Italian Novelist & Journalist, 1900-1978)

Liberty is what we celebrate here in America on the Fourth of July. It's what we've had from the time we were born here on American soil. We look at the flag. We say the pledge. We speak of the men and women who have died to maintain our liberty. America - the land of the free. We embrace freedom with the same ease that we pull air into our lungs. It's there, surrounding us. Freedom is ours. We have the liberty to make our own choices. To mess up. To get up and try again. To succeed. To question. To decide our own futures.  We don't all agree on what freedom means. But here in America, we believe freedom is our right.

Albert Einstein said "Everything that is really great or inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom."

Do you truly believe in freedom? Are you living in freedom or are you in bondage to your own doubts and fears of living free? As a young writer, I had to free myself of the fear of failure. If I wrote it and never sent it out, I would never face failure. Nor would I know success. But I had stories to tell and so I had to find the courage to embrace the freedom to tell those stories. Many years have passed since I licked those first stamps to send out that first bit of writing to try to become a published writer. I've had some successes. And many failures. But I have always been free to choose. Free to give up or to continue on with absolutely no guarantees that any kind of continued success would ever come my way. I always chose that freedom to keep writing. To continue to fill pages with words. Uncensored words. I wasn't guaranteed success or publication, but I was always free to write whatever I wanted. 

Freedom - put that on a writer's list of necessities right up there with perseverance and imagination and courage. Why do I need courage? To face the blank page. To tell another story. To believe in freedom. To believe I have the freedom to follow my dream.

"Freedom is the last, best hope for earth." (Abraham Lincoln)

May you be blessed with much freedom on this Fourth of July weekend. Thanks for reading!

Independence Day Weekend - God Bless America!

Hi everybody. Hope you had a great Fourth of July with picnics and fireworks and fun as you celebrated our nation's freedom. In our church bulletin today I put a quote from Pearl S. Buck "None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascination power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free." And that's right. We're so free that we never think about it. Not really. Not the way those who don't have our freedoms surely think about freedom.

We can do and say whatever we want - within the limits of the law, of course. We can choose our own professions. We can quit one job and find another. We can move to whatever community we want to. We can complain about the government without fear of reprisal. And boy, do we ever do that - complain about the government. But maybe that's good. Maybe that means we will never be satisfied with things as they are. We will always be growing as a people, as a nation.

But we can't forget that freedom is not free. Many men and women have given their lives in service to our country to keep our freedoms and to help people in other countries keep their freedoms. We have soldiers right now in harm's way who need our prayers as they serve our country. What better time than Independence Day to recognize and honor our veterans and those who are serving now. So don't be ashamed of that tear in your eye when you hear the "Star Spangled Banner." Let's wave the flag and count our blessings as an American. God bless America!

My husband's Southern Gospel Quartet is called the Patriot Quartet, and since they chose that name, they have made it a practice to sing some patriotic songs in all their concerts as they do their best to stand for God and country. They even titled one of their recordings that - "Standing for God and Country." Their patriotic songs celebrate our freedom as Americans and also our freedom as Christians. You can check out their songs on their website, http://www.patriotquartet.com/. They have some good ones.

They were singing at Fort Harrod in Harrodsburg, Kentucky last night and had a great crowd come out to hear some of those patriotic songs. But there were some unexpected guests that weren't as thrilled with their music while they were warming up and setting the sound system prior to the concert. Bats kept falling out of the upper reaches. I guess the high tenor notes were getting to them. Or maybe it was my husband's low notes. I'm not sure what frequency bats are on, but whatever these were on, the guys' singing was messing it up. Thank goodness and the Lord no bats came down to visit after the people started coming in. We might have heard some high tenor notes from some people besides the Patriot's tenor singer.

The quartet had three really good concerts this weekend and enjoyed singing on a weekend when they could showcase their patriotism and their patriotic songs.

I'm back to work tomorrow on my next Shaker book. The words were coming hard last week. I keep telling myself I need to make the turn for home. Nobody likes a book that goes on and on and forgets to end. So I think I'm turning for home. I hope I'm turning for home because if I'm not I'm going to have to weed out some of these words that I'm struggling so hard to plant on the paper or computer screen. Of course it's way easy to delete words on the computer. Hit a couple of keys and oops! It's all gone. And that's always when you don't want it to be all gone. Of course you can recover it. Can't you? Oh, not if you hit that other wrong key. I did a little of that last week. Just a paragraph's worth, but it was a good paragraph. I'm sure it was. But I couldn't find its echo in my head, so I just had to write a new one. I tried to imagine it was better. You know, writer's are supposed to have good imaginations.

Hope you have a great week with imaginings that bring you smiles and wonders.