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My teenage son was learning to drive. He had completed the classroom portion of Driver Ed. and he was very interested in getting some "behind-the-wheel" experience.
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I think there's like an art to shopping for produce. You can't just grab the first apple or tomato you see. You have to learn to squeeze the lettuce. My wife taught me how to do that. You have to learn how to check for holes and dents in apples and peaches; you don't just take the first one off the pile. You have to check to see how yellow those bananas are, or how green, or how black. There are ways to tell whether a vegetable is one you should buy. Now it's much tougher to shop for a spiritual leader you can trust. But there is a way to tell.
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The area around New York City is dotted with some scenic, protected bodies of water. They are reservoirs that supply the water for the millions of people that are in that area. Now, having lived in the New York City area for a number of years, we often took a weekend drive as a family and, well, we enjoyed looking at them. They're very, very scenic. You know?
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It's always moving when it comes to Memorial Day and you have all these families of veterans and people who were lost in a war or a battle and all these very poignant stories on television and in the news. You know, Memorial Day and days like it, they're different when you're a veteran or the loved one of someone who died for America's freedom. Because every day is Memorial Day. Because freedom's price for you has a name, a face, an empty chair at the table.
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It may turn out to be one of the deadliest, most damaging storms we've ever had - Hurricane Helene. You've seen it all over the news, and it really has hit me in the heart because of friends along that 500-mile path of destruction, especially in western North Carolina. I've watched the heartbreaking news on two different levels. First, obviously the layers of physical tragedy. But my heart also sees a picture that vividly clarifies the most important spiritual issues of our times.
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Honestly I dislike shopping for clothes. Looking for a suit would rank right up there with a root canal or something. As far as the pleasure factor is, I'd say. The problem is that they just don't have suits for guys who are shaped like me. Maybe there just aren't many guys who are shaped like me; maybe that's the problem.
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It was one of the great showdowns of my life - over a jar of peanut butter. Yeah. See, I was in love with who would become my "bride" for two and a half years before we got married, and because I loved her I began to change some things before we got married. I lost some weight; I changed my schedule to make sure there was a little time for her in there. I changed my after shave because there was one she liked. I became interested in her friends. My love was steadily changing one area after another in my life, until the day we went grocery shopping together for the first time.
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My friend Bill talked to me about his son's "microwave expectations" - "I want it quick!" Bill was in his early 50s, and his son had been married about a year at that point. And Bill said, "You know, I just can't believe it. My son and his wife want a home right now. They want to own a home immediately, they want furniture now, and they want a new car now!" Then he kind of summed it up by saying, "They want in one year what it took us 20 years to get." Well, that's fairly typical. The child expects a lot more than the father had.
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You want to write a best-selling book? Do something about self improvement. Man are we into self improvement! I mean, think about how the health clubs and how they boom in membership in January. A resolution is called, "A firm decision to do or not to do something." Well we find out that about 88% of our resolutions don't happen.
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It was at a point where we were crossing this long bridge across the Arkansas River. The bridge was long because the river was wide. My wife made an interesting comment about the river. She said, "Now, we've seen how it got that way." Wide, she meant. Actually, we've seen the Arkansas at its headwaters where it's a very unimpressive little stream. And as we've driven across the western United States, we've seen many creeks and streams that feed into the Arkansas. They take that dinky little stream and make it into a wide and mighty river.
