Pamela Poole's Blog - Posts Tagged "christian"
Summer on Southern Porches
Time passes slowly on a porch in the South, and by design, it’s comfortable and refreshing. If porch-sitting time isn’t spent in solitude and introspection, it’s shared with friends and family, listening as we dream of the future, pour out our hearts, or vent our disappointments and frustrations. More often than not, those conversations shape a Southerner’s character.
Time spent relaxing on the porch offers an opportunity to know and be known by neighbors. It’s the place where even a simple wave of the hand and friendly word can make a person’s day. Surely it’s rare not to feel your spirit uplifted after someone graces you with a wave and a warm, “Hi, how ‘ya doin’?”
As I write this, I’m sitting on my back patio. Twilight and an imminent sunset will be reflected in the rippling waters of the small lake behind my home. The antique metal porch glider I’m swaying in was the one my parents dated on back in the mid-1950’s, and many of my fondest memories of growing up involved this swing on a huge front porch that ran the entire length of my Paw-Paw’s house (I think such a porch is called a “veranda”).
It’s a summer evening, and the frogs are croaking. We call fireflies “lightnin’ bugs” here, and they’re all around, mostly noticeable in the shadows of the trees. An enormous Great Blue Heron splashes the water’s surface for a fishy bedtime snack, then roosts in the tree in front of me.
I’ve owned this glider swing and the matching chairs for about twenty-seven years since my grandfather went to be with the Lord. We’ve re-painted and patched up rather than buying the beautiful new outdoor furnishings on the market because they ground me, reminders of years of priceless lessons I learned from a remarkable man and his relationships on that front porch. People used to stay put after laying down roots, and my Paw-Paw lived most of his life in the house he bought to raise a family in, enlarging and improving it over decades. He passed straight from within its walls into his mansion in heaven.
The house was located conveniently across the street from the Baptist Church where he was a deacon and Sunday School teacher. It seemed to me that he knew everyone, the righteous and the rascals, and I marveled at how they all loved to be around him. They’d stop if they were walking, wave if they were driving, beeped the horn of their cars to see him on the porch swing with his newspaper open, or pulled into the driveway to visit a few minutes. He’d put down his paper or his Bible, ever ready to be a friend. It wasn’t unusual to see the preachers who came and went over the years at my Paw-Paw’s house as they sought his counsel.
When the green beans, corn, and other bounty began to come in from his garden, I’d sit outside with him and my grandma, helping them get the vegetables ready for her to can or freeze for the winter. It didn’t feel like work because I loved their company and their attention. I was important to them, and there was nothing else competing for our time together. I also fondly remember many hours sitting alone on their enclosed back porch in a creaking rocking chair, an old open hymnal in my hand, singing what I could recall of the melody from church worship services because I couldn’t read the music.
My personal experiences in porch-sitting have been the seed of my creative muse, painting Southern sights and writing stories set in Southern culture. The main characters who inhabit my stories have a moral compass. I wish the world was populated by people who were taught what I was on a Southern porch:
-Value and respect other people, even if they aren’t like you, but when necessary, have boundaries in place that they must abide by if they want your companionship.
-Respect what belongs to other people. You do not have a right to it. If you want something they have and can’t work enough to gain your own, it was never meant to be yours and could never make you happy. Find your own blessings with your unique skills and talents so you can be fulfilled.
-Work hard at a job, not at gaining hand-outs. Work earns more than money, it earns respect. No one likes a freeloader.
-People are wired for fellowship, and they are sent into one another’s lives for a reason. Nothing is a coincidence. Behave in the way you want to be remembered or talked about, for you can’t imagine what role a person might play in your future.
--Watch your mouth. Everything you say, in every nuance, matters. You lift someone or crush them, make them think or make them reject your opinion, by your words and attitudes. Nothing magic happens to filthy, insulting words you got spanked for using as a child that makes them suitable to use as an adult.
--Never start drinking alcohol and you’ll never become an alcoholic. You’ll dramatically cut back most of the stupid actions and decisions you make in life, all of which carry some level of regret and consequence for the rest of your life. Same with drugs and cigarettes. No one, in the history of the world, can claim that something good happened in their lives while under the influence of a substance than wouldn’t have been better if they’d experienced it with all their senses. Addictions tear families apart, and it’s everyone’s business if your choices make people around you suffer.
--To truly help someone, you must have put in the effort to become the kind of person who can offer sound advice or practical help. That’s a fearsome privilege, and no one is perfect—you have to look to a higher authority than your own fallibility for wisdom. There is nothing new under the sun, and the Bible will never fail to offer practical examples of how to manage something in life. But Bible knowledge alone isn’t enough--understanding God’s words only comes through knowing Christ, whose Spirit is the teacher and guide.
--Because mankind turned a perfect world into a cursed one, life is full of suffering. It’s proven in history that there will be no Utopia built by mankind, and this will only get worse until the Lord returns. If you aren’t in a life-trial now, hang on, because you will be. You learn something in each one that makes you a wiser person and a better friend to others, who will face trials and need your understanding and help. A cursed world populated with imperfect people has only one hope—a Savior. His name is Jesus Christ.
(For more information about my work as author of the Painter Place saga, see the Books section on my website at Pamela Poole Fine Art. To learn more about my books, shop on Amazon for them or contact me for autographed paperback copies. I'd love to speak to your group! To schedule speaking events, use the contact information on this website.
Time spent relaxing on the porch offers an opportunity to know and be known by neighbors. It’s the place where even a simple wave of the hand and friendly word can make a person’s day. Surely it’s rare not to feel your spirit uplifted after someone graces you with a wave and a warm, “Hi, how ‘ya doin’?”
As I write this, I’m sitting on my back patio. Twilight and an imminent sunset will be reflected in the rippling waters of the small lake behind my home. The antique metal porch glider I’m swaying in was the one my parents dated on back in the mid-1950’s, and many of my fondest memories of growing up involved this swing on a huge front porch that ran the entire length of my Paw-Paw’s house (I think such a porch is called a “veranda”).
It’s a summer evening, and the frogs are croaking. We call fireflies “lightnin’ bugs” here, and they’re all around, mostly noticeable in the shadows of the trees. An enormous Great Blue Heron splashes the water’s surface for a fishy bedtime snack, then roosts in the tree in front of me.
I’ve owned this glider swing and the matching chairs for about twenty-seven years since my grandfather went to be with the Lord. We’ve re-painted and patched up rather than buying the beautiful new outdoor furnishings on the market because they ground me, reminders of years of priceless lessons I learned from a remarkable man and his relationships on that front porch. People used to stay put after laying down roots, and my Paw-Paw lived most of his life in the house he bought to raise a family in, enlarging and improving it over decades. He passed straight from within its walls into his mansion in heaven.
The house was located conveniently across the street from the Baptist Church where he was a deacon and Sunday School teacher. It seemed to me that he knew everyone, the righteous and the rascals, and I marveled at how they all loved to be around him. They’d stop if they were walking, wave if they were driving, beeped the horn of their cars to see him on the porch swing with his newspaper open, or pulled into the driveway to visit a few minutes. He’d put down his paper or his Bible, ever ready to be a friend. It wasn’t unusual to see the preachers who came and went over the years at my Paw-Paw’s house as they sought his counsel.
When the green beans, corn, and other bounty began to come in from his garden, I’d sit outside with him and my grandma, helping them get the vegetables ready for her to can or freeze for the winter. It didn’t feel like work because I loved their company and their attention. I was important to them, and there was nothing else competing for our time together. I also fondly remember many hours sitting alone on their enclosed back porch in a creaking rocking chair, an old open hymnal in my hand, singing what I could recall of the melody from church worship services because I couldn’t read the music.
My personal experiences in porch-sitting have been the seed of my creative muse, painting Southern sights and writing stories set in Southern culture. The main characters who inhabit my stories have a moral compass. I wish the world was populated by people who were taught what I was on a Southern porch:
-Value and respect other people, even if they aren’t like you, but when necessary, have boundaries in place that they must abide by if they want your companionship.
-Respect what belongs to other people. You do not have a right to it. If you want something they have and can’t work enough to gain your own, it was never meant to be yours and could never make you happy. Find your own blessings with your unique skills and talents so you can be fulfilled.
-Work hard at a job, not at gaining hand-outs. Work earns more than money, it earns respect. No one likes a freeloader.
-People are wired for fellowship, and they are sent into one another’s lives for a reason. Nothing is a coincidence. Behave in the way you want to be remembered or talked about, for you can’t imagine what role a person might play in your future.
--Watch your mouth. Everything you say, in every nuance, matters. You lift someone or crush them, make them think or make them reject your opinion, by your words and attitudes. Nothing magic happens to filthy, insulting words you got spanked for using as a child that makes them suitable to use as an adult.
--Never start drinking alcohol and you’ll never become an alcoholic. You’ll dramatically cut back most of the stupid actions and decisions you make in life, all of which carry some level of regret and consequence for the rest of your life. Same with drugs and cigarettes. No one, in the history of the world, can claim that something good happened in their lives while under the influence of a substance than wouldn’t have been better if they’d experienced it with all their senses. Addictions tear families apart, and it’s everyone’s business if your choices make people around you suffer.
--To truly help someone, you must have put in the effort to become the kind of person who can offer sound advice or practical help. That’s a fearsome privilege, and no one is perfect—you have to look to a higher authority than your own fallibility for wisdom. There is nothing new under the sun, and the Bible will never fail to offer practical examples of how to manage something in life. But Bible knowledge alone isn’t enough--understanding God’s words only comes through knowing Christ, whose Spirit is the teacher and guide.
--Because mankind turned a perfect world into a cursed one, life is full of suffering. It’s proven in history that there will be no Utopia built by mankind, and this will only get worse until the Lord returns. If you aren’t in a life-trial now, hang on, because you will be. You learn something in each one that makes you a wiser person and a better friend to others, who will face trials and need your understanding and help. A cursed world populated with imperfect people has only one hope—a Savior. His name is Jesus Christ.
(For more information about my work as author of the Painter Place saga, see the Books section on my website at Pamela Poole Fine Art. To learn more about my books, shop on Amazon for them or contact me for autographed paperback copies. I'd love to speak to your group! To schedule speaking events, use the contact information on this website.
