My mom only stood 5 feet 2 inches tall, but none of us kids and as far as that goes, anyone else ever challenged her when she had her mind fixed. You could look into those deep brown eyes and find no question as to whether she meant business or not. I have seen her fix her eyes on a person only to see them melt or retreat from their agenda once they understood hers. Yet I also saw in…
At Dad’s funeral our pastor Brother Jack talked about how Dad had impacted his life. He spoke of an incident or two that, while praying, he heard the love and respect my dad had for him and how it impacted his self-image and further kindled his fire for ministry. But the comment that made me smile the most and say “amen” was: “No short prayers came out of Brother Coker’s mouth!” My dad had a way of getting into a…
When he picked up the phone and said “hello” I could hear Fox News in the background. I knew he was sitting in his recliner, feet up, evaluating the direction of the world based on what the commentators were saying. When he realized it was I, he would say “How you doing today, my son?” I would say “I’m fine” and ask what he was doing. He would always say “Taking it easy; you want to talk with your mama?”…
When I think about how brutal the blustery weather of early March can be this time of year, it reminds me of my own male testosterone issues. I, like most men, have moments of anger and impulsiveness. I never had a desire to be a mild mannered, quiet guy. My genetic makeup drove me to be an objective person with passion, ambition, and more than my share of ego. Yes, an aggressive, abrasive, stick your foot in your mouth, extrovert….
Blustery weather also reminds me of how life, like the wind, can literally remove stability from our path. I remember the mornings I walked to and from Kodiak High School in winds we called “willy waws.” In Florida you might call them tropical storms, because the velocity approached 40+ mph. That really wasn’t inclement weather in the 49th state! If they called off school for every blustery snow day, we would have rarely had school! We got used to the…
During my first “Winter Survival” as a Boy Scout I was shown how to build a lean-to for shelter during the cold Alaskan winter. After the Scoutmaster illustrated the essentials, each of us was sent out to make his own shelter before nightfall. I completed my project just before dark, so I thought I would walk around and look at what my fellow campers had constructed. To my surprise, none of the shelters looked exactly like the Scoutmaster’s original. Some…