Troy Michael Parrish (1978-2010)

Troy Michael Parrish passed into Eternity on January 8th 2010, as a result of injuries suffered in a car accident.
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I’m not sure that the preceding sentence can adequately capture the immensity of this terrible reality. You’d just have to know Troy to understand how utterly irrational it is to think that he is no longer with us.

Here it is, nearly a month after the fact, and I still cannot wrap my head around it…  it just doesn’t make sense.

I was there, I saw them lower him into the earth on a sunny and bitter-cold windswept day, yet I still want to think that I’ll see him somewhere…  at an OHS football game along the chain-link fence that surrounds the field, or filling up his truck at the Valero gas station, or carrying a blue sack of Kingsford charcoal briquets out of Brookshires…

…but I won’t.

Contradictions Within/Without Abortion

This Friday marks the 37th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision in the United States Supreme Court, arguably the most controversial and politically significant case in the history of our country’s highest court.

In effect, this precedent repudiated state and federal restrictions on abortion that were in place at the time, prompting a national debate that continues even to this very day.

For those, like myself, born well after the fact, it’s rather difficult to imagine the socio-political influence of this case, to say nothing of the cultural implications.

Leo O’Connor

Putting one’s beliefs into action was the topic as the Henderson Rotary Club heard from Christian missionary Leo O’Connor during their weekly luncheon meeting.

“Gospel work is not only about going out and telling people about Jesus,” O’Connor said. “But rather showing them what Jesus taught in how you live your life and the difference you make in the lives of others.”

O’Connor is a native of South Africa and serves as executive director of Gateway Services and Moya Discoveries.

Gateway Services is a nondenominational Christian ministry whose purpose is to fulfill the holistic gospel challenge of Jesus Christ by proclaiming the Word of God while also attending to the practical needs of the poor.

“If the gospel message is love, in its basic essence, then what is love practically?” O’Connor asked. “For those that thirst, the gospel is a drink of water, and for the hungry it is nourishing food.”

A Strange Sinking Feeling of Vague Unease

In my younger years I had the great pleasure of sitting at the feet of a wiser older man who lived in my neighborhood, who was capable of giving me a personal glimpse into a past I had only known in musty books.

He grew up in the South during the Great Depression and served in World War II, which is not remarkable in itself, but he also happened to be the son of a noted economist of the time period.

During my teenage years, when I first began to foster the love of ideas and history that has, at this point, grown into a near-obsession, he was able to not only articulate substantial anecdotal recollections but also impart to me a considerably more scholarly insight than I was able to acquire in the standard-issue textbooks I perused in my public high school.

One time I asked him if his father had any intuition about the great Wall Street Crash of 1929, if there was anything that stood out or gave any indication that, even in hindsight, would benefit those that came after.

I remember he told me a lot of things. Unfortunately, I do not remember much of the technical details, but one remark stands out to this day.

“There was a strange sinking feeling of vague unease,” he said. “Like something wasn’t quite right but he couldn’t put his finger on it.”

At the time, this remark loomed large and it still echoes in my thoughts these two decades hence: a strange sinking feeling of vague unease.

A New Year, and A New Decade

Well, that was quick.

Here we are, already in the last couple days of the first decade of the new millennium.

It seems like it was only yesterday that we were all getting paranoid about the mythical “Y2K bug” and here we are on the precipice of the year 2010.

Ten years ago today, I was complaining about AOL sending me free CD-ROMs for their service and now AOL is all but irrelevant, while Facebook holds sway as the current social networking paradigm.

Unfortunately, the media has neglected to identify this decade with a quick label by which it can be referred to for future eras.

I’ve heard some suggestions, some better than others. There’s a group based out of England pushing for the “aughts” and some here in the States prefer the “zeroes” but, frankly, I’m not terribly impressed with either. It seems like the historians or, at least the mathematicians, should pull their weight on this one.

But therein lies the inherent difficulty in identifying a span as long as a decade in an era where things progress so quickly.

Our culture has become so easily disposable that it’s not so much that a hot commodity is “here today and gone tomorrow” but is “here today” and gone today as well.

Andy Warhol famously quipped that in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes, but I’d be willing to venture that number is probably overstating it a bit nowadays.

Perhaps that’s the real contribution of this decade… things becoming more easily digestible and thus more easily disposable.

Be Amazed, Be Very Amazed

I was standing in line at a local mart of commerce, holding a carton of eggnog, when I began eavesdropping on the young woman in line ahead of me.

By eavesdropping I mean that I was initially trying to mind my own business but, due to the sheer volume of her voice, I soon could not help but overhear a goodly portion of the conversation she was having on her cell phone.

The woman was breathlessly detailing all the items she had purchased over a 48-hour period in a long soliloquy.

Gifts ranging from the new electric razor she had purchased for her brother-in-law (whom she described as wearing a perpetual five o’clock shadow) to the latest electronic doodad for her 10-year-old son (who also, it seems, is struggling with some manner of attention deficit disorder).

At the end of this stream of consciousness, she paused for breath and then opined in a weary voice: “I still feel like I’m missing something.”

Indeed.

Now I would be the last one to play Scrooge and bellow a surly “Bah, humbug!” to those for whom this time of year is a season of great material indulgence. Surely my own children can expect plenty of gifts wrapped in brightly-colored paper and stockings stuffed with toys, candy and fruit. My beloved can also expect her husband to surprise her with a tawdry startlement of some sort.

However, I also believe there is a profound danger in losing one’s bearings when tossed about by the winds of raging commerce.

For a moment, I want you to consider deeply the purpose for this season.

A man named Nicholas

“…he had a broad face and a little round belly,
that shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!
…he was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
and I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!”

During a time of year when images of this certain “jolly old elf” seem to be as ubiquitous as the sparkling lights and hanging greenery found about town, perhaps it might do to look deeper into this figure that has come to be perceived as nothing less than some sort of secular demi-god.
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In the year 280 AD a boy named Nicholas was born in a provincial fishing village along the southwestern coast of Asia Minor, near modern-day Turkey.

He lost his parents while still a youngster but not before they helped him discover the gift of faith in Jesus Christ.

Every Day He Lived A Sermon

Great men are seldom thought so in their own time.

More often than not it is long after a great light has been extinguished that you are able to appreciate how much you able to see by its radiance, and how you were comforted by its warmth.
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I would like to tell you about one of the greatest men you’ve probably never even heard of, for he accomplished no great feats of athletic prowess or political gain.

This was not a man of any great celebrity, save for that which is contained within a small town in rural Rusk County.

His biography is not published among the annals of the profound thinkers or military leaders of human history.

Flags were not lowered to half-staff nor did media outlets interrupt regular programming at his passing.

Aside from the fond sentiments of his relatives, as well as a sizable throng of former students and colleagues, this humble teacher passed into eternity with as little fanfare as he entered it nearly seven decades prior.

Yet, for those who knew coach Chester Roy, he was a figure whose influence still lingers on since his passing upon this day four years ago.
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Advent, is coming…

The gentle Autumnal nuances of October and November have sharpened into the crispness of December in East Texas, the “Yuletide” season is upon us and Sunday marked the first week of Advent.

“Advent?” a minister friend of mine responded with scoffing surprise when I mentioned the occasion. “Are you turning Catholic on me?” he chuckled.

Of course, my friend was just needling me a little bit. We’re both rather staunch Baptists, though we still find ways of good-naturedly antagonizing each other about fine points of doctrine.

I do admit a certain predilection for some of the observances that are traditionally linked with the more “liturgical” denominations, so I reckon that makes me a rather poor Evangelical. There are worse fates, I suppose.

Now this is certainly not a hill that I inclined to die upon. For whether or not one chooses to celebrate this or any other “shadow of the things to come” is far less a matter to me than the substance of which one is inclined. I do not desire an empty formalism any more than I would encourage a vain abstinence.

One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind, and the one who observes the day should observe it in honor of the Lord.

Mourning, In A Season of Thanks

Baby Candace with Daddy Sam, Winter 1978

For most, Thanksgiving is a holiday full of rich memories of family and friends, while, for many, this time of year is but the beginning of a dark season of despair.

Reasons offered for this general tendency are varied, some researchers cite the increased pressures or unfulfilled expectations of the holiday season, combined with a sudden and dramatic propensity for increased festivities or indulgence.

Maybe it’s a turnabout on the old adage: “You can’t appreciate the sweet without the sour,” that too much of the “sweet” makes the slightest amount of “sour” that much more unbearable.