CHRISTMAS 2020

Dear Emily, Christmas Day 2020 certainly will be a memorable day for many people for one reason or another – some good – some not so good. I am quarantined. On Monday, I went with a friend to Murfreesboro. On Wednesday, she tested positive for Covid and for flu. Since my contact with her fell into the forty-eight-hour time period, I am possibly infected. So, like thousands of other families around the world affected by this pandemic, our family was not able to celebrate Christmas Day in person. We will do that on New Year’s Day when I am safely out of quarantine. Another reason that Christmas Day 2020 will be memorable is that Christmas morning about 6:20, a truck bomb exploded on 2nd Ave in downtown Nashville near the AT&T building. At first, the law enforcement thought no one had been killed, but now the authorities have discovered human flesh near the site. Where it came from remains to be discovered. Second Avenue is a popular tourist street in downtown Nashville. It intersects with Broadway where all the country music venues are and has lots of neat eating places like the Old Spaghetti Factory. Right now, the street looks like a war zone. As I watched the constant stream of news footage of the bombed-out street on T.V. Christmas Day, I was reminded of the 2nd Avenue that I remember from my childhood over sixty years ago. Second Avenue was where the Dobson-Hicks Seed Company was located in an old building that looked a little scary from my young point of view. Daddy was a traveling seed salesman for Dobson-Hicks for several years. His territory covered an area from Nashville to north Alabama to Cookeville and all points in between. Every small town had a feed store back then. Daddy called on all of them. Every year he made a special trip to 2nd Avenue in Nashville. Dobson-Hicks was located somewhere along the middle of 2nd Avenue. It was in an old building with huge double screen doors on the front. I was there only a few times, but those huge screen doors still stand out to me. I rarely ever went inside the old warehouse, but during the Christmas holidays, Daddy would take our family to Nashville to see the decorations and to pick up his bonus from the company. While Mama, the boys, and I sat in the car, patiently waiting for him to hurry up and come out so we could go to Harvey’s Department Store and ride the escalator, he would visit with his employer, Mr. Howard Dobson. After what always seemed like an exceptionally long time, he returned to the car carrying his “bonus” – a “spiced round” and a white bank bag with twenty-five silver dollars. According to Google, a “spiced round” is a Christmastime beef specially sliced at the Porter Road Butcher in Nashville, Tenn. The specialty meat, reminiscent of corned beef, has all but disappeared in recent decades amid changing tastes and the steady decline of local butchers to prepare it. All I know is that it was a delicious rare treat! Not everyone liked it. Some of the family would rather have had ham, but I thought it tasted wonderful, and I looked forward to the specialty every year. The bag of silver dollars in that white canvas bag tied with a string was also exciting – I thought we were rich! Daddy always carried one silver dollar in his pocket – I suppose for good luck – but he took all the rest of the booty to First State Bank “…for Mr. Rob Stammer to take care of for him.” I was such a naive child. It was years before I realized that those silver dollars were not on a shelf at the bank just waiting for the day Daddy would go back and get them! No, of course they were deposited and used, I’m sure, to pay for our Christmas. I am sad to think that the historic buildings, including the old Dobson-Hicks building, on 2nd Avenue are now structurally damaged from a senseless act of violence; however, God sent me a blessing: a trip down the memory lane of past Christmases: Daddy, Dobson-Hicks, a bag of twenty-five silver dollars, and a “spiced round.” Love, BB

THE NAME CHANGES EVERYTHING!!

Dear Emily, In spite of the challenges of the pandemic has caused, eight choir members presented a musical celebration for the congregation of the Caney Spring UMC. Here is the opening story that I used. INTODUCTION TO “JESUS THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT THAT NAME” CHRISTMAS 2020 “It was the name that changed everything!” A few weeks ago, I received a text from a lady who is a friend but not a close friend. I had her son in class several years ago and that’s why her name is in my contact list. So when a text popped up with her name, I wondered what in the world she could be texting me about. Her husband loves yard sales and auctions. All year long he stops at yard sales or goes to auctions and buys things, brings them home and stores them in a building in his back yard. Then on tractor pull weekend when visitors come to Chapel Hill from towns and states far and wide, he pulls out all the things he has bought over the year and has his own big yard sale. Her text read “Mrs. Brown, my husband found this vase in a box of things that he bought at a yard sale, and we thought you might like to have it.” If you know me very well, you know that I’m definitely not the first or second or even third person one would think of when looking at a vase. I’m just not a vase person. Then she sent me a picture of the vase. Here it is.

I don’t know what your taste in a vase is but this is definitely not mine. There is nothing about this vase that appeals to me. It’s pale yellow—not a bright eye-catching color. It’s not a bud vase. You can’t just drop a buttercup or a single rose in it and call it a day. No…if you use this vase for flowers, you have to “arrange” the flowers, and let me tell you - one of the gifts that I did not get is “arranging” flowers; so I’m sitting there staring at my phone trying to think of a nice way to say “Thank you for thinking of me, but I believe I’ll pass on the vase” when she sent me a picture of the bottom of the vase, and on the bottom of the vase, written in a handwriting that I recognize, it says “Mrs. Jim Ogilvie’s vase.” And the name changed everything!! Mrs. Jim Ogilvie was my great Aunt Annie. She was the kindest, sweetest, most gentle soul you would ever meet; and she was kind and gentle and sweet and sharp as a tack until the day she died at 98. I loved her! And I immediately texted back “YES!! I do want that vase! How much do you want for it?” My friend returned “Oh Mrs. Brown. It’s a gift. We just want you to have it.” And I do because the name changed everything. Two thousand years ago, God sent us a gift. Why? “For God so loved the world,” he just wanted us to have it. But the thing about this gift is that at first glance, it is not very appealing. The gift came wrapped in a flesh and blood baby, born in a cave doubling as a stable to an unwed teenage mother. He was raised in an obscure town called Nazareth where he apparently lived at home until he was thirty and started his career. When he did start his career, his friends and religious teachers tried to fling him off a cliff so he traveled the country side, followed by a bunch of rag-tag fishermen and other questionable characters, teaching about love and peace, turning the other cheek and washing each other’s feet! Really! He was ridiculed by the religious authorities, arrested, nailed to a cross where he died an excruciatingly painful and humiliating death between two thieves. Who wants a gift like that? But then we hear the name of the man. It’s Jesus!! Jesus!! And the name changes everything. Jesus – the name that can change chaos into calm, fear into peace, doubt into certainty. Jesus – the name that in itself is a prayer when there are no other words. Jesus! Who wants that gift? I do!! I want that gift and you do too! Jesus! – because there really is something about that name! And the name changes everything!