The Return

 Since North Carolina Governor Cooper imposed the stay-at-home order, my husband and I have been attending church by facebook in the comfort of our living room. It was different, but it was still the body of Christ meeting with each other. I learned that "Church" does not refer to a building. The church I attend is the meeting place of the congregation. We are the church.

Here's Littlejohn United Methodist Church where I am a member. It's a small, family oriented church with a storied history dating as far back as 1775. 

The governor announced recently that North Carolina would be moving into phase 2.5 of the CoronaVirus safety measures. Our church chose to reopen, although under strict guidelines.

We didn't greet each other at the door. I missed that most of all during the six months absence. 

We didn't pass the peace of Christ to each other.

We didn't pass the collection plate either.

The choir didn't sing. 

What we did was sit in pews that were designated as socially distant from one another. 

We waved at each other.

We wore masks. Strange how I could tell someone was smiling even if the mask tried in vain to hide all emotions.

The congregational hymns were played from the minister's personal sound system. We could not touch the hymnals, but that didn't matter. The songs we sang were the old familiar ones, comforting us all. Okay. A mask might muffle the noise, but let me tell you when Victory in Jesus started playing, none of us could resist joining along. The result was a quiet, prayerful sound that I will always remember.

Years ago I interviewed a man a hundred and five years old. His grandmother, a former slave to a family in our same congregation, raised him. She told him many stories that he passed along to me, but the one that stuck in my mind was the blanket singing at the little black church back in the woods. Once a year the congregation of slaves and freed blacks draped blankets outside the church building to make a path that circled around. Then the congregation walked around the church seven times, as in Biblical Jericho when the walls came tumbling down. I thought the blankets were to delineate the path, but no. He explained they were to muffle the sound of their singing as they marched.

Slave owners, fearful that secret messages were being passed by the slaves in the fields singing as they toiled, would not permit any singing. None, and that included Sundays. 

The human spirit can adapt, and these people did. They sang on and on and on, only they sang into buckets, or blankets. Faith can move mountains.

So last Sunday when I was singing into my mask, I thought of those who had their songs muffled nearly two centuries ago. What God has set in place, let not man put asunder!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen 

Mountain Memories

 In 1923 my husband's grandparents went on their honeymoon to Pilot Mountain, North Carolina. 

Yesterday, my husband and I went on a 52nd anniversary jaunt to the same mountain, probably the same rocks.

I don't know if this is the identical view as the one nearly a hundred years ago, but I'd like to think that this young couple with so much promise in store for them stood at the same spot as we did and were blessed with the same beauty spreading out before them. In the century since then, so much has changed, yet so little is different. Rocks and mountains are steadfast in that unchanging way, but number one change, the photography available. They would have never imagined a selfie like we took.

Nor would they have imagined the social distancing of the corona virus era, although they both endured the pandemic of 1918. Working the corn fields kept them away from germs. Hiking the footpaths across North Carolina has kept us away from the newest version of germs. Here's my husband ahead of me yesterday on the trail overlooking the knob, and then me at the end of the trail beside the pinnacle.

This mountain is a can't miss landmark not all that far north of Winston-Salem. It is a tall mountain crowned with a distinctive knob. 

           A photo from the visitor's center. 

     Flag lowered in honor of September 11.

I love making memories that are special to the heart. This was one of them. 

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

 

The Foothills

Every writer needs a support group. That's a given, especially for those who are just developing the craft. Let me tell you about one of the groups I belong to that has really stretched my writing abilities. We call ourselves the Foothills Writers. We meet weekly, in person for a year at the library, then by zoom for months and now in the fellowship hall of a local church, spread apart, an eight foot table per person. Yes, we do write, there, on the spot with topics thrown at us by devious prompt finders who snicker as they read the assignment of the week. Six minutes later we share our results. I am humbled at their responses. So creative. So polished. A complete story, plot, characters, dialogue. Six minutes! 

A year ago we self published a booklet filled with examples of our writings. By self published, I mean, Self. Published. As in run off, folded and stapled at one of our meetings.

This year we've had time to investigate a little more about self publishing and have moved up to independently publishing a book through a company. It's still in the works as each of us finish our particular submissions. We chose broad topics like sports, poetry, history, even sci-fi. (yes, me! See what I mean about stretching my writing.) The theme that ties those together is The Foothills with the majority of our entries somehow featuring the Foothills of North Carolina.

At our meeting a couple weeks ago we discussed how we would present the technical term of Foothills to the reader. We want to clarify exactly where on earth we are located. Since I am a former fourth grade teacher who taught North Carolina social studies for years upon years, I was tasked with writing a succinct definition of the Foothills using all our input. Easier said than done.

Fourth grade basic lesson here: North Carolina has three regions, the Appalachian mountains to the west, the Atlantic coastal plain to the east, and sandwiched between them, the Piedmont Plateau. Word derivation is one of my interests, so of course I taught my children a little Italian/Latin background, pied, pie, pede (foot) mont, montium (mountain). We even discussed the connection with the derivation of the word "pedicure." That, my students could relate to. 

In North Carolina the Piedmont Plateau is higher in altitude than the coastal plain and made up of rolling hills leading westward to taller foothills at the base of the Appalachians. The Blue Ridge Escarpment makes a definite cut out of the ancient mountains that clearly shows where the foothills end and the mountains begin. It can be seen in county after county along interstates 40 and 77, mountains in the distance, hills between.  

The Piedmont of the eastern United States

That's a bit TMI for our purposes. We want to show through our writings how hills have influenced the three counties making up our writer's group - Alexander, Caldwell and Burke to be exact. The reader is in for a treat! 

A sample of what our Foothills Writers see every day

I'm still writing and rewriting a definition of the Foothills to go in the introduction of the book. I'll keep you posted as to the progress of the book. Meanwhile in writing as well as in real estate, it's all about one thing:

Location. Location. Location.

Catch of the day, 

Gretchen