Deep into this Christmas season it seems appropriate to talk about attending a service at the Hope Church in Cordova, Tenn., on the day before my birthday.
The sanctuary was far more expansive than most Presbyterian churches I've attended, although the comfortable seats and overhead jumbotrons provided a somewhat intimate feel.
A relaxed yet spirit-filled atmosphere and the message from senior associate pastor Eli Morris (even more than the inspiring contemporary Christian music) held my attention for the full hour.
With below shoulder-length silverish hair and trimmed beard, Morris is anything but the conventional Presbyterian preacher. He speaks with calm, rational conviction in everyday language with his audience rather than at them. There was no lecturing. No admonishments. No hellfire or damnation for sinners.
In modulated fervor, he spoke to the 1,000 or so in the vast church arena of how we humans are invariably beset by underlying insecurities, worries and uncertainties of all form that help instill natural doubts and fears about our creator's involvement in our lives.
He said there are any number of instances when people feel God inexplicably has abandoned them in times of need, or allowed events that humans interpret as negative.
But his message on this Sunday, titled "Unexpected Doubts," sought to assure that the divine force that breathed life and consciousness into our individual collections of dividing physical cells is always there, regardless of how we might attempt to interpret what we can't possibly understand.
He shared the story of an Indian tribe with a rite of passage that saw a blindfolded 13-year-old boy led deep into a dense and dark forest on a moonless evening where he was abandoned beside a tree to spend the night alone. Hearing each pop and crunch on the forest floor and every growl and unfamiliar noise in the branches amid pitch blackness would leave most frightened.
After a sleepless night of worry and fear, the birds overhead finally began to softly chirp then sing full-throatedly as the sun edged above the horizon. At that point the teenager was allowed to remove the blindfold and for the first time see his surroundings.
Glancing toward a tree several yards away, he saw his smiling father armed with his bow and arrows. He had sat quietly guarding over his son throughout the night.
The youth's doubts and uncertainties certainly had been real enough in the moment, yet were ultimately unfounded since he'd never truly been alone.
So it is with us when it comes to our creator, the minister explained. Through the fears, uncertainties, losses and terrors of physical existence that comes then departs in the relative flash of a firefly's tail, each of us will feel very alone at times although we never are in the spiritual sense.
I obviously can't speak for you, valued readers, but that simple parable offered by this Memphis-area minister in denim jeans felt comforting and resonates still within my own consciousness.
FOIA penalties
Following my column about the need to put actual teeth into our state's often abused Freedom of Information Act, more than one reader asked what I thought would represent sufficient penalties to effectively deter such willful behavior by elected and appointed officials.
I firmly believe $2,500 for a first offense and a week's incarceration would help achieve the goal of an open and honest government in the public interest. It would be paid for out of the bad-faith offender's pockets rather than the taxpayer trough.
For those who don't learn from an initial conviction, I'd be all for doubling the penalty for second offenders. As things now stand, fines for FOIA scofflaws are minimal and basically ineffective to stem such violations across Arkansas.
Some fresh incisors are sorely needed, without a doubt.
Mall villages
It's the time when surviving shopping malls can breathe a little easier knowing many shoppers still prefer the spirit-filled excitement of being in the stores to ordering online.
But it's clear the trends of late nationally have been away from preserving these metroplexes of commerce, which for 50 years have served larger communities as cultural centerpoints for both purchasing and socializing.
Last year, Time reported that by 2022, analysts estimate a fourth of U.S. malls could be out of business, "victims of changing tastes, a widening wealth gap and the embrace of online shopping for everything from socks to swing sets."
What's to be done to reverse the pattern? One innovative move I read about recently is to transform these enormous trade centers into climate-controlled and sheltered villages, complete with residences, condos and every amenity necessary to make them virtually self-sufficient in most ways.
Not only is the concept creatively ingenious, but the idea strikes me as possibly fitting well with the needs and various limitations of our rapidly aging population, much of which will soon be no longer able to drive.
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Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 12/16/2018