Hey, friends!
What are y'all planning for the weekend?

  ‘Freedom has a taste’

  I'm
writing this column on Election Day morning, one week before Veterans
Day. As I write, I'm wearing a bracelet I haven't worn in a long time.
  The
bracelet feels very familiar on my left wrist, because it's one I wore
every day for four years. I got it when I was in the ninth grade, and I
didn't stop wearing it until 1973, just before I graduated from high
school.
  It's not a pretty piece of jewelry —  flat and
silver-colored, made out of some kind of cheap metal. The silver paint
on the inside is completely rubbed away from being worn for so long. It
has no decorations, just some words and numbers in block type:

  It's
a POW bracelet, made to be worn in honor of Americans being held
prisoner by the North Vietnamese. To remind us to pray for them and
their families. To help us remember that brave men were being held
captive by our enemies. To remind us that freedom has a price. That War
has a face.
 We wore the bracelets with the commitment that we would continue to wear them until our prisoners were released.
I'm
wearing this bracelet again today for several reasons. The first is
because I'm hoping and praying that another Vietnam-era Navy pilot,
another former prisoner of war, will be, by the time you read this, our
new president-elect.
  The second, is because I feel a connection to
Capt. Crayton. You kind of feel like you know somebody when you wear
their name around your wrist — and pray for them — for four years.
  And
the third, and probably most powerful reason, is because the POW
bracelet reminds me of my father. Today, when the eyes of the world are
on two men, one of them a Vietnam-era Naval aviator like my dad, my
mind is much on my late father, the veteran of three combat tours.
While flying his RA5-C Vigilante over enemy territory, he could easily
have been shot down, like his comrade John McCain was, like many of his
friends were. Like my best friend Diana's father was. Unlike my dad,
John McCain and Render Crayton, Diana’s daddy never came home.
  Up
until this morning, all I knew about Crayton was that he was a Navy
pilot who had been shot down and captured by the Vietnamese, and that
he had been one of those who came home alive.
  Because I found the
worn old bracelet in a drawer this morning, I was curious to learn more
about the man whose name it bears. I did a Google search on “Render
Crayton,” and soon found myself reading a feature story published Oct.
11 in the Idaho Statesman, by a reporter named Dan Popkey. Then I found
a second story, based on another interview Popkey did with Crayton,
this one about his friend and fellow prisoner, John McCain.
  I
learned that Crayton was McCain’s advanced-flight instructor for four
months in Corpus Christi before the war. They also spent several months
together in a 40-man cellblock in the infamous prison, the Hanoi
Hilton. Crayton knew McCain well. He’s supporting him for president.
  A
native Southerner, Render Crayton was born in North Carolina in 1933,
the same year Daddy was born in Mississippi. His Navy career spanned 30
years, including the seven he spent as a prisoner of war in North
Vietnam. Flying an A-4 Skyhawk based on the USS Ticonderoga, he was
shot down Feb. 7, 1966 — the date on my bracelet. After he ejected from
his wounded jet, he broke his right shoulder, which never healed
correctly because of lack of treatment.
  From the ground, in enemy
territory, he radioed the other planes in his flight and gave his
position, and two of his fellow A-4s strafed the area around where he
had landed, trying to protect him from the North Vietnamese. A
helicopter was dispatched to go pick him up, but it was slow in
arriving. Worried that they would run out of fuel, Crayton asked that
the fighters patrolling the area to protect him go back to safety.
 By
the time the rescue helicopter finally arrived, his parachute was still
there, but Crayton was gone —  captured by the enemy. The young pilot
spent the next two years in solitary confinement. He was imprisoned for
a total of seven years in camps in and around Hanoi. During that time,
like John McCain, he was brutally tortured by his captors.
Along with McCain and about 600 other prisoners of war, Crayton was finally released in 1973.
  I'll
never forget when the prisoners were released. I was a senior in high
school in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Our family gathered around the TV
to watch news coverage of the first POWs getting off the big C-141As
that had brought them to Clark Air Force base in the Philippines.
  They
emerged one by one from the door of the plane, emaciated and pale, and
walked, as straight and tall as they could with their improperly healed
broken bones, down the steps, and proudly saluted the American military
men waiting for them. I’ll never forget watching one of the frail
former POWs gingerly kneel on the hot runway and kiss the concrete of
the U. S. base, overcome with joy at being once again on American soil.
  I
watched with tears running down my cheeks. I still can't watch or read
anything about prisoners of war without getting very emotional. These
men were my dad’s comrades-in-arms. These were men like the pilots I
had grown up around, like the fathers of my friends, our neighbors on
the Navy bases where I grew up.
  I’m so happy to know now that
retired Navy Captain Render Crayton is alive and well and living in
Ketchum, Idaho. I’d love to be able to talk to him. I’d love to be able
to thank him. But for today, I’ll just wear his bracelet one more time,
in tribute to him and to the other brave men like him. Men like John
McCain. Men like my father.
“Freedom has a taste to those who fought
and almost died for it, that the protected shall never know.”
 (Written
by an unknown author on a cell wall in the Hanoi Hilton)

Years ago, I fell in love with a poem called “The Marshes of Glynn”
by Sidney Lanier, an 19th-century musician and poet from Georgia, and
I've tucked away lovely bits of it in a mental apron pocket.
   In his
lyrical verses about the salt marshes that divide the Sea Islands of
Glynn County, Georgia, from the mainland, Lanier celebrates the island
forests, as well. He describes their “beautiful glooms, soft dusks in
the noon-day fire ...”

His description of the woods, especially of
the interplay of light and dark, has stayed with me, and I think of his
words often when I'm walking through our own Ozarks woods that remind
me of the poet's “braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine
...”

   Lanier loved the forests of coastal Georgia  — his “dim, sweet woods ... the dear, dark woods” — like I love ours.
Doyle
and I went back to the Schermerhorn Trail near Compton for a leisurely
hike on Sunday — a cool, breezy, shiny-golden October day. I don't
think I've ever been on a prettier walk. The buttery sunshine poured
through the woods canopy, making the leaves glow like stained glass in
every shade of green, gold, yellow, orange and red. The wind was just
shifting around to the north as it prepared to blow a cold front
through, so the leaves were trembling in the breeze and letting go of
their twigs to flutter down like soft, jewel-toned rain.

   Through the
forest's shade — Lanier's “emerald twilights” — slanting sunbeams
darted through here and there, spotlighting and transforming a branch
of yellow leaves to melted gold, turning a fallen red leaf to a glowing
ember.

For my husband and me, walking through our own “dim, sweet
woods” is the ideal way to spend a Sunday afternoon, and this time of
year, the hiking is close to perfect. The air is cool and fresh, the
bugs are just about gone, and even the poison ivy is fading away. And
best of all, the fall leaves turn the woods into a colorful
kaleidoscope.

   When I'm walking in the woods, my worries fall away,
my problems evaporate and my priorities seem to shift back into their
proper order.
   I believe Sundays are supposed to be special days,
days when we don’t work, days when we honor the God who made us, and
rest, and refresh our spirits, and spend time with those we love.
Walking in the woods is a way for me to do all of those things.

   When
we're hiking, Doyle and I don't talk much — we just walk, and think,
and try to absorb our surroundings. I stop often to shoot photos, and
he waits patiently while I kneel down to shoot a close-up of a red
leaf, or zoom in on a spiderweb shining in a late-afternoon sunbeam.

   At
one point in our walk Sunday, my husband wanted to venture off the
trail and go up a hill to the top of a ridge we could see through the
trees. He led the way, and I followed along, picking my way over fallen
limbs, crunching through dried leaves, using a springy branch for a
walking stick.
   When we got to the top, we discovered it wasn't a
bluff, as we'd thought, but just the crest of a hill that fell off
steeply on the other side. The view was lovely. Far away, across the
wooded valley, blue hills faded into the distance.
   On the hilltop, I
found myself standing under a little maple tree whose leaves were
painted in Christmas colors — bright greens and Santa-Claus reds. The
wind was shifting to the north, and the cheerful leaves were trembling
as they were blown upward like an old-fashioned lady's skirts.

Under that maple tree, I made a conscious effort to just feel, to soak in the experience.
   The
wind was fresh, almost cold. The late-afternoon sunshine was glowing
through the leaf canopy. The bright leaves were dancing over my head as
I looked up. The smell of the woods was of drying leaves, of north
wind, of both living wood and dying. All I could hear was rustling
leaves and the whoosh of the wind through a million trees. Red and gold
leaves let go of their twigs and floated free, like tiny kites released
by cheering children.
   We made our way back down the hill and found
the trail again. As we headed back to our car, the sun was low in the
sky, slanting through the woods, silhouetting the trees’ trunks and
branches as we looked to the west, and setting the leaves on fire.

“But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest,
And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,
And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem
Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream ...”
That Georgia poet would’ve loved our Ozarks woods.

By Celia DeWoody
Copyright 2008 Harrison (Ark.) Daily Times
Published Oct. 29, 2008

O God, we acknowledge you
today as Lord,
Not only of individuals, but of nations and
governments.

We thank you for the privilege
Of being able to organize ourselves politically
And of knowing that political loyalty
Does not have to mean disloyalty to you.

We thank you for your law,
Which our Founding Fathers acknowledged
And recognized as higher than any human law.

We thank you for the
opportunity that this election year puts before
us,
To exercise our solemn duty not only to vote,
But to influence countless others to vote,
And to vote correctly.

Lord, we pray that your people
may be awakened.
Let them realize that while politics is not
their salvation,
Their response to you requires that they be
politically active.

Awaken your people to know
that they are not called to be a sect fleeing
the world
But rather a community of faith renewing the
world.

Awaken them that the same
hands lifted up to you in prayer
Are the hands that pull the lever in the voting
booth;
That the same eyes that read your Word
Are the eyes that read the names on the ballot,
And that they do not cease to be Christians
When they enter the voting booth.

Awaken your people to a
commitment to justice
To the sanctity of marriage and the family,
To the dignity of each individual human life,
And to the truth that human rights begin when
human lives begin,
And not one moment later.

Lord, we rejoice today
That we are citizens of your kingdom.

May that make us all the more
committed
To being faithful citizens on earth.

We ask this through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen.

(From Priests for Life) 

In “The Problem of Pain,” C.
S. Lewis writes, “The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I
believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled
happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by
the very nature of the world; but joy, pleasure and merriment, he has
scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and
some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would
teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our
return to God; a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a
merry meeting with our friends, a swim or a football match, have no
such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some
pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”

This
lesson, like so many bright diamonds of truth mined by Lewis’ searching
heart and sharp intellect, is one that twinkles in my mind and lights
up cloudy places in my own understanding of how God’s love works in our
lives.
Our Father provides pleasant inns for his pilgrim children as
we travel, but doesn't mean for us to mistake them for home. Our
pleasant inns differ. For some of us, our pleasant inn might be the
haven of a loving marriage. For others, our close relationship with our
children, or a deep intimacy with our friends. For others, sports, or a
challenging vocation, or travel might provide pleasant inns, places
where we can rest and be refreshed on our journey.
It's our nature
to seek “settled happiness and security.” We are drawn toward it like
birds are compelled by instinct to make nests for themselves, like
puppies just naturally pile up together to keep warm on a cold day.
But Lewis says our wise Father withholds this settled happiness and security from us. Haven’t we all found this to be true?

Just
when we can finally see what we long for in the distance, we move
forward to grasp it — and like the pot of gold at the end of the
rainbow, that settled happiness and security moves back a little
farther, remaining forever just a little out of our reach.

Lewis
tells us, like the wise professor that he was, that the reason God does
things this way is that if we ever really reached the security that we
crave, we’d “rest our hearts in this world” instead of continuing on
our pilgrimage to our true home that’s not of this world.
God made
His children to be in this world, but not of it, and we must always
remember that we’re just passing through on our way to the Promised
Land. All of the sweet things that speak to us of security in this life
— marriage, financial stability, good health, a supportive family, a
loving home — as wonderful as they are, cannot protect us, cannot
shelter us, cannot shield us from the storms of life.

But our loving
Father doesn’t just leave us wandering in a dark and lonely land. He
showers us with joy along the way. In the Psalms, He tells us, “See,
you lowly ones, and be glad; you who seek God, may your hearts be
merry!”
Lewis says we are never safe, but we do have plenty of fun,
and some ecstasy. Haven’t you found that to be true? I have. I’ve never
felt bedrock safe — as much as I’ve longed for lasting safety and
security — but I’ve had lots of fun and laughter, and many, many
moments of joy sprinkled throughout the shifting-sand insecurity of
life.
God showers us with those golden twinkles of joy and fun,
because, like the old professor says, those sparkling, fleeting moments
have no tendency to make us rest our hearts in this world, any more
than we could build a house on a falling star or wrap ourselves up in a
rainbow.
Our Father has refreshed me on my journey with many
pleasant inns, but has always drawn me up short when I begin to mistake
them for home.
And maybe — when I finally begin to learn the lesson
that it’s a mistake to set my heart too deeply on anything in this
world — I’ll be able to even more fully appreciate the pleasant inns He
lets me rest in for a little while as He leads me on my way home.

Ever since I was a little girl, I've been a big believer in guardian angels.
When
I was about seven, I took catechism classes at the Navy chapel at
Whidbey Island, Wash., to prepare me for making my First Holy
Communion. My Methodist Mama fell in love with one of the prayers we
had to learn, and she helped me memorize it. It's called "Prayer to My
Guardian Angel":
"Oh, angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God's
love commits me here. Ever this day be at my side, to light and guard,
to rule and guide."
If I was ever scared of the dark at bedtime, or
worried and fearful, Mama would say, "Just say your prayer to your
guardian angel, Baby, and you'll feel better."
And I did. It made me
feel safe to know that my heavenly Father had sent a special angel to
keep watch over me, especially since my own Navy pilot Daddy was often
on the other side of the world.
I don't think these guardian angels
of ours are tame little Valentine's Day cherubs. I think they're
strong, shining warriors who would fill us with awe if we could see
them, like the angel Gabriel who came to Mary to tell her she was going
to bear the Messiah.
Long ago, I memorized a verse about angels that
has often comforted me: "He will give His angels charge concerning you,
to guard you in all your ways. They will bear you up in their hands,
that you do not strike your foot against a stone."
I've always liked
the thought that the Father sends out His angels to protect us on His
behalf. Sort of like having our own heavenly Secret Service contingent
on the job.
As a mother, I've often prayed that God would send His
angels out to protect my boys from harm and from evil. When they first
learned to walk, when they started kindergarten, when they got their
driver's licenses, when they went away to college, when they moved far
away from home. And now that my younger son has just bought a
motorcycle, which scares me to death, I'm redoubling those prayers.
Knowing her children have guardian angels on duty is very comforting to
a mother, even when those children have grown up.
In a recent class
at church we talked about guardian angels. One of the Scripture
references about them is that verse in Matthew that says, "See that you
do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their
angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven."
For
more than a thousand years, our church has been teaching that every
person on earth has their own guardian angel, whose job is to watch
over us and guide us — to guide us to good thoughts and good works, and
to protect us from evil.
Way back in the fourth century, St. Jerome
said, "How great is the dignity of the soul, since each one has from
his birth an angel commissioned to guard it."
Your own church might
not share that exact belief, but to me it's such a reassuring thought,
that every single one of us has our very own angel, one especially
assigned to us personally, ever since we were babies.

In light of all the thinking I've been
doing about angels lately, I couldn't help but think about how amazing
and wonderful it is that this precious little girl has her very own
reliable angel already on the job, standing guard over her, looking
after her, protecting her from evil.
I pray for our tiny unborn
grandson blooming in his Mama's tummy in Florida, and wonder if his
angel is already on duty. I hope so.
I've heard stories about people
having encounters with God's angelic messengers — encounters that have
saved them from harm, or brought them great peace.
My own grandmother Poppy told me about something that happened to her that might have been an encounter with an angel.
When
her only son, my Uncle Walter, was off fighting in the Korean War, my
grandmother was worried to death about him, really worrying herself
sick over the chance that her child might be wounded or killed.
Years ago, Poppy told the story to me something like this:
"When
Walter was over fighting in Korea, I just worried and worried and
grieved over him so much that I was just about to lose my mind. And
I'll never forget what happened one night. I was in my room by myself,
praying for Walter, and crying, when I felt a big, warm hand gently
laid on my shoulder. I couldn't see anybody there, but I wasn't scared.
And it was like I could hear these words in my heart: 'Polly, I want
you to stop making yourself sick, worrying over your son. Walter's
going to be all right. He's going to come home.' And I knew it was
true, and I never forgot it. And always after that, I had peace in my
heart and I knew my child was going to come home."
And he did.
What a loving, priceless gift for our Father to give us — an angel of our very own.

By Celia DeWoody
Copyright 2008 Harrison (Ark.) Daily Times

On Sunday, Hagrid, our young Great Dane, was having his favorite kind of outing — at least it started out that way.
After
early church, we loaded him into the back of our little Prius and
headed south, down to the Buffalo National River Park for a picnic and
hike on a gorgeous early-fall day.
We parked at the trail-head for
Hideout Hollow and unfolded our chairs. Doyle and I soaked in the
beauty of the quiet woods surrounding us as we ate a leisurely lunch,
while Hags ran around, sniffing, sniffing, sniffing.
You know, a Great Dane is really nothing but a big ol' hound dog, and he LOVES to sniff.
 I
have a mental image of what it must be like for a dog, with his amazing
sense of smell, to come from life in a closed human space, like our
house, into the wild woods, full of all kinds of rich scents.
Remember
the old "Wizard of Oz" movie? It started out in black-and-white, with
very stark cinematography. Then after the tornado had blown the
farmhouse away from Kansas, and Dorothy opened the front door and took
her first steps into the Land of Oz, everything changed suddenly from
black-and-white to full, blazing Technicolor.
That's how I imagine
it is for Hagrid to go from being inside the walls of our house to
being out in the woods full of all kinds of fresh, brilliant smells — 
like going from black-and-white to Technicolor.

So he was in Dog
Heaven, sniffing, sniffing, sniffing all those delicious scents. How
wonderful it all must have seemed to him — A Candyland of delectable
aromas. I bet he smelled a  raccoon. A squirrel. A deer. A rabbit. A
fox. Maybe even the wildest, strongest smell of all — a bear.
As
Doyle and I hiked the trail to the waterfall, our dog ran ahead of us,
grinning his goofy grin, pink tongue lolling, sniffing, exploring,
drinking out of the creek, reveling in his chance to frolic in his wild
playground, free of leashes, free of walls and fences, surrounded by a
garden of doggy delights.

The trail through the hickory and oak
forest eventually opened up and we found ourselves on top of a high,
rocky bluff, with an expansive view of a deep wooded valley and the
more distant  hills.
Doyle and I shot pictures, keeping a close eye
on our dog to make sure he didn't get too close to the drop-off. Hagrid
seemed to instinctively know the edge of the bluff represented danger,
and stayed well clear. Suddenly, he started yelping and frantically
running around in circles on the rocky top of the bluff.
Doyle
hollered to me in a firm voice, "Celia, you go up there!" pointing to a
clearing in the woods, off the trail and away from the edge of the
bluff. "Stay back!"
My husband was bending over our yelping dog, and
I could finally get a good enough look through the trees, from my
distant spot, to see that the back half of Hagrid's big black body was
completely covered in a blanket of angrily buzzing yellow-jackets.

The
dog's instinct was to run, and Doyle told me later his fear was that
our buddy would — in his panic — run over the edge of the high bluff.
When
I saw the insects all over Hagrid, my fear was that he might have some
kind of allergic reaction to all of the stings, or even just die from
the sheer number of stings I was afraid he was getting. It looked like
there were hundreds of wasps on him.
Hagrid's master went quickly to
the rescue. Doyle tried a stick, but ending up using his hands to
scrape the yellow-jackets off our poor dog.
Man and dog moved on out
of my sight, Hagrid trying to run away from the burning stingers, Doyle
trying to get as many of the bees off as he could, and trying to calm
the frantic dog.
Left behind in the woods, I finally hollered to
Doyle to find out what was going on. He said the yellow-jackets were
gone, and it was safe for me to join them on up the trail, past the
bluff.
Hagrid was calmer, and no more bees were in sight. My husband
trying to gently pull the stingers the wasps had left behind in the
swollen bites all over poor Hags' hindquarters. We later discovered
Hagrid had about 25 stings, and Doyle had gotten five or six himself in
his rescue efforts. As I write three days later, both of them are fine.
You
know me. I've been mulling this incident over, and it seems to me I can
draw a lesson for my life from Nature’s school. Maybe you can, too ...
In
his delight in exploring the big world, our dog stuck his nose in where
it didn't belong. He wandered off the trail, and was soon covered up
with stinging insects. His master had to step in among the buzzing,
burning stingers to help his terrified pet.
Same for us. We run
ahead, get off the trail, and stick our noses in places they don't
belong, and sometimes we release a nest of mad yellow-jackets. Finding
ourselves covered in red-hot stingers, scared and hurting, we cry for
help.
And our kind Master — who loves us even more than we love our
pets — rushes to our side and brushes the wasps off and picks out the
stingers and rubs soothing ointment on our angry red welts and calms us
down with His voice.
And after that — like our dog has been doing
since his scary run-in with the yellow-jackets —  we walk a little
closer to our Master’s side.
----
By Celia DeWoody
Copyright 2008 Harrison (Ark.) Daily Times
Published Oct. 1, 2008