Wednesday, February 25, 2026
(Part 4 of …)
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Choco
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of your salvation.
In the Camry I drove Mike to the Wilmington airport in plenty of time to catch his plane. The day of flight delays did not extend into the the following week. He had carried a fairly flimsy paper plate full of biscuits and gravy out of our hotel for me, balancing it well, and I stopped beside the road outside the airport and ate. Coffee, biscuits and gravy, cheese omelet, two small cinnamon buns. Orange juice. Happiness runs …
While I ate, I called Uncle Merlie,who invited me to visit him again, at his home this time. From the street to his front door there were no steps. Flat, easy to walk for him and all of us, and I thought gratefully of our apartment in Austin, where no stepping up or down interrupt our walk from parking lot to living room.
Merlie’s daughters and their families filled his house. We watched 80 or so more pictures from sixty years ago, which Mike and his step-dad Bob had put together before coming from Seattle and Philadelphia for the party. More laughter, recognition, memories … Uncle Merlie told me about his farming life, and I looked at the sale bill announcing his auction of livestock and machinery, framed on the wall of his garage … January 2, 1960 … “lunch served by Cub Scouts from Chester-East Lincoln.”
Hmmm. I went to that school. Mom was our scout leader. I would have been 10 years old, fifth grade, my last year as a Cub Scout. Taking plates of biscuits and gravy to a bunch of frozen farmers on the second day of the new year?
Wait a minute. What year is this again? I welcomed this flowing back and forth from past to present, but also I felt a little dizzy with a kind-of double-vision, seeing each person I knew as a child with one eye on 1960 and one right here, right now . If I close one eye I see Merlie, or Susan, Sandra, Sherril captured in the pictures and my rekindled memories. When I close the other, there they all are smiling and offering me lunch. Plenty of food left over from the party. A giant card celebrating 100 years takes up most of the coffee table.
Eventually I said my goodbyes. Looking forward to a sunshine-filled drive north along the coast to a tiny town not far from the Pamlico River and a couple of nights with my friends Ron and Connie. More memories, although not so far back, of Kogudus prison retreats and music everywhere. Ron learned to play guitar so when he led music the inmates could find a key to sing together. He put together a great songbook for us. And we kept thinking and talking about Connie’s dad Jack, who brought all of us together to make these retreats at Danville Correctional Center, year after year. Ron rode with me to a men’s retreat at Lake Lulu in Wisconsin, hosted by my friend Don. We visited their church in Mahomet now and then and shared great meals together while we sat around the kitchen island watching the chef. Remembering all of that, and more, enriched by lots of prayer.
I couldn’t pronounce their town’s name at first. Chocowinity means “fish from many waters,” a Tuscarora Nation word. I say it out loud a few times, and it begins to be beautiful. Most of the folks who live there now just call it Choco, but the whole name would make a great first line of a haiku:
Chocowinity
Walk along its boardwalk
Watch the birds watch you
We sit in front of a roaring fire, order and pick up pizza, talk about our love for Jesus, and settle into sleep.
The next day I wake up early, Connie and Ron have been up awhile. Ron built their home in a forest of loblolly pines, and morning fog envelops the trees. A woodpecker works hard outside. I wonder if he’s in a hurry. We are not. In between the quiet times we talk and talk, and pray, and rest, and Ron drives us around to see the homes where their two daughters and families live, just blocks away.
When they decided on North Carolina as their retirement home, their two daughters said, “Why don’t we all go down there together?” And they did. For more than twelve years, Ron and Connie have lived close, watching their grandkids grow. In welding class their grandson created a painfully beautiful vision of Jesus carrying his cross.  Happiness runs in a circular motion …
Even now, says the LORD,
return to me with your whole heart
for I am gracious and merciful.
Slowing down like this inside my body and my mind feels like rubbing a beautiful polished stone between my palms until it glows and I glow too. I am quieting. God invites me to reacquaint myself with the BE in Psalm 46:10.
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
BE
(Jonah 3, Psalm 51, Joel 2, Luke 11)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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