Tom wasn’t the only one who made the trip. Lots of people joined with us.

We started the evening @ the Watershed. Food was so great that the Food Network was at the restaurant, taping.

I ordered the hot veggie plate and I’m telling you that sweet potato casserole was heavenly.

I don’t know if Mary Kay Andrews and Party Patti were having trouble reading the menu or what.

Personally, having Jack Riggs sing Janis Joplin and Roger Miller was my favorite part of my presentation.

Though I think Beth Vann’s interview about the work going on at Decatur Cooperative Ministries was really enlightening for many folks.

Chick-Fil-A catered the event — notice my cup of sweet tea nearby. (Sorry Tim. Couldn’t save you any.)

Jack told wonderful stories about when his son came to live with them — how all he had was his Gator. That Gator has been his constant companion. That’s how it is down South — we take our friend where we can find them. For some, it’s with the gators.

Patti, Tom and Kathie Bennett. Kathie is the booking agent and is the person who makes this entire tour work, in every way possible. She’s like a one-armed fiddler in a snake pit – always, always, always busy with one snake or another between sets. Thank you, Kathie.

Thank you Bill Starr and Decatur Library and Georgia Center for the Book for a joyous evening.

Thank you also to all those who were providing prayer support behind the scenes. Much appreciated in all sorts of ways.

Thanks, too, to Hugh Hollowell at LoveWins for those words of encouragement and to PCH for changing the sheets, putting flowers in the room and a robe in the bathroom. Thank you for making the dinner reservations, inviting folks to join us, and making sure I got there on time. Thank you, too, for laughing in all the right places and singing Watermelon when Jack forget the words to the song.

]]> http://karenzach.com/2010/and-a-lovely-time-was-had-by-all/feed/ 0 http://karenzach.com/2010/georgia-center-for-the-book/ http://karenzach.com/2010/georgia-center-for-the-book/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:29:47 +0000 Karen http://karenzach.com/?p=3084

If you really want some entertainment, join us for a star-studded event at the Georgia Center for the Book, Decatur Public Library, 7 p.m. Tuesday. Catering by Chick-Fil-A. Interview with Beth Vann, Decatur Cooperative Ministries. Stories by Karen Spears Zacharias. Music by Jack Riggs. Jokes at Patti Callahan Henry’s expense.

Shame is the stranger who leads me down a dark road where more shameful things await, things that will surely cause me pain, leave me wounded, and struggling to figure out how it was I got off on the wrong path.

When I was a child shame was a familiar, if unwelcome, companion.

I felt shame when at age 9, I lost my father. It’s only part of a longer story but the night before he shipped out to Vietnam, Daddy had teased me over some candy I had but refused to share with him. The next year, when he died in a battlefield, I felt shame.

I thought it was my fault he had died. I thought God was punishing me for not sharing my candy. That’s how kids process grief. Divorce or death. They think it’s their fault. They think if only they are better, smarter, prettier, nicer, sweeter, more of anything really, then bad things won’t happen to them.

We train them to think that by rewarding them every time they do something they are supposed to do. Giving them applause and attaboys, crisp dollar bills and shiny quarters.

We pay them to get good grades. We pay them to clean their rooms. We pay them to wash the car or that black lab they begged and swore they’d care for f-o-r-e-v-e-r.

Money is the reward by which we motivate, compel, coerce, and sometimes control family, friends and business associates.

Generally-speaking, though, money is a pretty good thing. It enables us to buy books, get an education, get the cancer treatment we need, or adopt the baby for whom our hearts ache. We use it to keep our bellies full and our cars running up and down the roadway. It allows us to keep the heat on at church so we can fellowship and the doors of the homeless shelters open. It helps us help others, if we are so inclined.

I have a lot of friends who have a lot of money but I also have a good deal of friends who live paycheck-to-paycheck. I’ve lived that way for much of my own life, for the most part comfortably so, which is why I was startled recently when shame came a’calling again.

People I admire very much were discussing how hard it would be to live off $40,000 a year.

“Can you imagine it?”

These friends were not being snotty or uppity or anything like that. They were expressing the same sort of mortification I express whenever I consider the homeless. I really can’t wrap my mind around living the nomadic life on the streets of America.

I felt shame because I admire and love these people. I would never want to do anything to disappoint them or hurt them. I wouldn’t want to offend them in any way. I worried that if they knew the truth of my finances – that I have lived on much less than $40,000 a year and that even now I live paycheck-to-paycheck – they may think less of me. Or worse, they might take pity on me.

That got me to thinking if that’s how I make the homeless feel when I come into their community? Do I unwittingly shame them because I can’t imagine what it’s like to live without a bed or a bathroom to call your own? Do my words and my actions make them feel unworthy to be my friend? Does it sting to be in my presence because they are so aware of the economic gap that divides us? Do they go to bed each night feeling ashamed because they believe that if only they were better, smarter, prettier, nicer, sweeter, more of anything really, then none of these bad things would have happened to them?

You see, it doesn’t really doesn’t matter whether you reside in a house of stone in a gated community or in a trailer without the skirted dust ruffle, or in a sleeping bag damp with morning dew, it’s painful to wake up each morning in a world where you are not envied or admired or worse yet, never respected.

A world where shame is your constant companion.

At church this morning during share time, Pastor Kevin related this amazing story. I had to share it with you all.

My summary: Yesterday (Saturday, March 6) about noon, Pastor K. realized that he hadn’t gotten anything on his to-do list for the day started yet. He made a pact with himself that if he got going and got them done by 5:30 pm, he would treat himself to Starbucks. Working diligently under the new inspiration, he completed all of his tasks by the time designated. As he pulled into an otherwise deserted Starbucks parking lot, an acquaintance that he developed upon first moving to Hermiston a couple of years earlier pulled into the spot next to him. The young man, who had since their initial meeting joined the military, was sporting his camo fatigues. Kevin was glad to see him, because they only got to see each other about once or twice a month. Upon sharing greetings, his friend’s attire prompted Kevin to ask whether he had just finished training for the day. Actually, the young soldier explained that he’d just come from the viewing of his squad commander. Taken aback, Kevin inquired about whether the death resulted from a deployed situation or a local incident. The soldier sadly replied that it was local and the result of suicide, rushing to add that this was the reason he had called Kevin earlier to meet him at Starbucks so he could talk it through. For Pastor Kevin this was startling news, as he was unaware of having received any phone call, but did not let on about it and was glad the Spirit had led him to the right place at the right time. While these two were waiting for their order, two other gentlemen entered and hesitantly approached them. The older of the two reached out his hand at the soldier, “Are you Wes? I’m Kevin.”

Earlier that day, the soldier had called a mutual friend of his and Pastor Kevin’s to get Kevin’s number. When transcribing the number, he had unknowingly recorded the final digit incorrectly. Calling the mistaken number, the soldier received a female voice in answer that initially did throw him off, but when he asked for Kevin, she did reply that she would get him. While this unknown soldier’s request to meet at Starbucks later that day to discuss the suicide was confusing to this second Kevin, his son was recently home from a deployment in Iraq, he had suffered the loss of his own grandfather by suicide when he was in his early twenties, and, as a believer in divine providence, he felt a prompting to say, yes. He said that he would meet this soldier, who he did not know, at Starbucks at 6  pm, Saturday, March 6^th.

That is how a soldier struggling with the suicide of a respected squad commander came to share coffee with his pastor friend, an older, godly, gentleman, who had dealt with just such a loss at just such an age, and a fellow soldier.

And the Spirit lives on . . . and in His mysterious ways.

Uncle Buck, Sister Tater, Miz Shelby and Chris with Jeff Foxworthy and the Blue Collar Comedy boys @ PDX’s Rose Garden last night.

Not sure what time the phone rang, seeing how I was asleep and all, but there was Sister Tater on the other end

gleefully announcing, “We had such a good time! Thank you so much! We laughed so hard I thought Greg was going to have a stroke.”

I just hope Sister Tater remembers this night when MY birthday rolls around.

As for me I was in my hometown of Columbus, Georgia with the lovely and gracious host Mamie Pound and her staff at the Butler’s Pantry. That’s Chef Derek showing off one of his creations. He was trained in New Orleans and has been working up in New Hampshire. “I don’t like fried foods,” he said, explaining his choice in menus. “I like my food fresh.” Come on Sundays and you can enjoy his Creme Brulee French Toast. But if you come during the week, you simply must have his coleslaw. You’ll understand what he means by fresh. It’s not the mayo variety of coleslaw.

I also managed to work in a nice visit with my friend Jane Wilson. When we are together and introducing ourselves we say it this way: “I’m Jane, I live in Columbus but am from Oregon.” And “I’m Karen, I live in Oregon but grew up in Columbus.” (Paintings in background by Gary Pound).

More poetry.

I spent the afternoon over at Lake Forest Trailer park with the photographer from the Ledger taking photos for an upcoming piece in the newspaper. Afterwards, I popped over to see my childhood girlfriend, Karen, and her family.

Daughter Aynsley has grown into a beautiful lady. 14 going on 40. “What do you expect when you live in a house with parents who are 51?” Aynsley asked, as if 51 was the mark in which daughters begin carrying for their aging parents. It was disturbing to learn that Karen had recently spent several days in the hospital following a mild heart attack. Thankfully her son, a soldier at Fort Benning, recognized the signs and got his momma to the hospital pronto.

Philip was sporting a new hat that I liked very much. “It keeps my bald head warm,” he said. But apparently Miz Aynsley thinks it only adds to the image of her aged parents. “All the other kids at school tease me about my parents being so old,” she said. “Their parents are only in their 30s.”

Well, I said, tell them your parents where in school getting an education, not out having babies when they were 12.

When I worked as a business reporter for the Ledger back in 1998, one of the first stories I did was about The Pound House B&B.

Gary Pound is a renowned artist in Georgia, (those painting in the Butler’s Pantry are his) and the B&B reflects his & Mamie’s personality. It’s like coming to your grandmother’s home — the grandmother with the really nice house.

There’s that wonderful wooden bannister that tempts you to climb on it and slide, which you might do if you weren’t aging and worried about breaking a hip or something.

And the Redd Room makes a lovely spot for reading and writing or just sitting and listening to the owl hooting outside your window. From my window I can see the Government Center which is where I spent a great deal of time when I was writing my first book about Georgia’s first-elected woman judge — Benched: The Memoirs of Judge Rufe McCombs. I didn’t get to see Rufe this trip as it was so short but she’s living with her daughter Beth right now and still getting along pretty well for someone in their 90s.

Wonder what Miz Aynsley would say to that?

I’m off this morning to Warner Robbins. I’ll be @ the Lamb’s Well on Margie Drive from 2-4 today. Come on out if you’re in the area and say hello.

]]> http://karenzach.com/2010/foxworthy-the-kinfolks/feed/ 0 http://karenzach.com/2010/yall-come-2/ http://karenzach.com/2010/yall-come-2/#comments Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:08:48 +0000 Karen http://karenzach.com/?p=3050 I’m home.

Not that home.

The other one.

Drove into Columbus, Georgia about 8:30 p.m., following the drive from Dothan. I’ll be speaking at a luncheon as part of a test run for the reopening of the restaurant attached to The Pound House. Mamie always puts on a lovely meal and I’m sure this test run will prove to be lovely. If you’re in the area and want to join us, come on over for lunch @ noon.

Meanwhile, Sister Tater and Uncle Bubba and Miz Shelby and Chris will be gearing up for the Jeff Foxworthy show in Portland tonight.  Jeff asked if I’d like to go to the show when he came to Portland but I explained that I couldn’t as I’d be in Georgia. (We swapped places in a time warp exercise. He flew. I drove. One of us is warped.) So Jeff made the tickets available for the family. Backstage passes included.

So while I’m out here working, y’all, my family is meeting Jeff Foxworthy and having fun at my expense. (Do you feel sorry for me yet?)

Well, I suppose it’s okay since today is Uncle Greg’s 50th birthday.  What a way to celebrate. Uncle Bubba, as we call him, will be right at home with Jeff.

Meanwhile, I’m in Columbus today and Warner Robbins tomorrow. If you want to keep up with me check the appearance tab at the top of this page. And here’s an article you might enjoy from the Macon Telegraph.

When I worked as a reporter I always felt so bad for the folks I was interviewing because invariably they would have to get their photos taken. It didn’t matter what the story was — a crop circle, a sex offense, a cancer survivor, or just someone poking around in the garden — we would have to stop the interview at some point for the photographer to snap a shot. Posing for a photo always seems unnatural to me. So to take the heat off me,  I asked the students at Chipola College to pose for me. I think they did a terrific job, don’t you? They are all hams, apparently.

Of course when it was our turn to pose, we women held our own. That’s Dr. Sarah Clemmons on my left, your right. She’s currently acting president of one of Florida’s oldest community colleges. I wished I could have spent all day with Dr. Sarah and the staff, and especially with the students.

I was so impressed to learn from Dr. Sarah that Chipola offers Friday only classes so that moms or dads who have trouble with childcare can still manage to get an education. They can schedule the bulk of their coursework so that they only have to be on campus on Fridays. What a wonderful idea that is! People can work the rest of the week and take their classes in three-hour sessions starting early on Friday morning. Handling such a schedule requires some strong commitment on behalf of the teachers as well.

Innovative thinking that’s what that is.

Although a state-school, Chipola has a benefactor who donated $100,000 to build a chapel on site. It’s going to be beautiful, too, nestled among the towering pines.

I did manage to get one more visit in with Dr. Sarah before I left Florida. She asked me to join her at the Optimist Club meeting. I shared some of the stories of Double-Wide with the folks and one fella came up and told me he was a cousin of Nell Harper (aka Harper Lee).

His name is Earl. This isn’t him in the photo. This is a fella I  met in Dothan. But what I loved about Earl is that he was so touched by the stories I shared, that he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek before taking his leave. What a sweetie!

When I arrived in Dothan yesterday it was sooooo cold. The first thing I did was go buy a coat. I didn’t bring one, seeing how it was that I was coming SOUTH and all. Temperatures have been warmer in Oregon than Alabama. Then I met Bill Perkins, editor at the Dothan Eagle for lunch at Larry’s Barbecue.

I’ve communicated with Bill for sometime via email and Facebook but yesterday was our first meeting. By the time we got through our lunch I’m sure Bill felt like he’d been in a confessional booth — on the receiving end. He got the condensed version of After the Flag and my thoughts on everything from Video Bingo to Prosperity Gospel and Lessons from the Homeless. Poor Bill. He’ll be careful before he invites me to lunch again.

I also got to meet the lovely Miss Betty Forbus, director of the Houston-Love Library. I spoke at a place called The Basketcase, appropriately enough. They serve a delicious peanut butter pie.

Kathie (that’s her in the brown coat) does a great job making sure she introduces me to everyone. (She knows EVERYONE). But I do best with knowing something about the person, not just their name.

Like Buddy here.

He’s a good friend of Sister Schubert’s.

He’s also a former Marine, who served in Vietnam.

I told a Marine story during lunch. He explained the Jarhead remark to everyone later.

Oddly enough at this luncheon were three women all named Dana, though one of them pronounced it differently than the other two.

Among those attending today’s luncheon was a gal who told me she’d stayed up until 4 a.m. reading DW.

“I read the story about your friend and thought it was about my aunt,” she said.”It was so much like my aunt’s story, even the red hair.”

Her tears were a reminder to me again about the far-reaching impact one life can have on another.

This week I had the briefest of encounters with a gal. She was ringing up my tab at a cash register and I noticed a beautiful  birthstone ring.

“Is that your birthstone?” I asked.

“No,” she said, shifting the ring. “My mother’s.”

And I don’t know why, but I paused for just a second, looked in the sale clerk’s eyes and asked, “Did you lose her?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I”m so sorry,” I replied.

She was much too young to have lost her  mother already.

We are always too young to lose our mothers and our fathers.

One gal at Chipola told me her father just passed at age 86.

“I loved my daddy so much,” she said. “I can’t imagine what it was like for you to have lost your’s so early.”

Several gals at Chipola told me of their own experiences of growing up in trailers, with lunatic fringe for family, and of all the firearms.

They also spoke of how Jesus saved them.

Oh, and I don’t have any photos but what a wonderful time I had in Blountstown. I could have spent an entire evening visiting with Dustin and Lauren, swapping tales about church and God and farmers and working with youth. Or just visiting with any of the good folks from First Baptist and Miz Reta Maupin, the Library angel.

“The bookmobile and Jesus saved me,” I said.

If not for the two of them I’d be in jail today.

Just ask my brother.

Ken lost the business.

I asked him to contribute his thoughts about losing a business, given that it was a “Christian” business. What’s the matter, didn’t God keep his bargain of Jerm. 29:11? I thought God wanted to prosper us.

How come God let a Christian bookseller  go belly up?

 Guest Post by Ken Summerlin

 “Name it and claim it!” 

“Believe and be blessed!” 

“God wants to prosper you!”

We hear a lot of prosperity theology being preached these days by the likes of Joel Osteen, Paul & Jan Couch, Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar, Eddie Long, Benny Hinn and the list goes on and on.  The only thing wrong with what they’re proclaiming is that it’s not true.  “Does God want to bless you?  Does God want to prosper you?”  Of course He does  . . . just not necessarily in the way that these men and women are selling it to us.  The trouble is that many people are buying exactly what they’re selling. 

 Now in my mid-fifties, I’ve been blessed with 3 successful careers. (I’ll define “successful” for you later.)  The first was in the industrial uniform service industry and the second was in the Christian retail industry.  My new career is as a free-lance writer.   

I started a nearly 20 year stint in the industrial uniform service industry in an entry-level position and worked my way up to Vice President and General Manger of one of the company’s most successful operations.  I was honored to have been able to assemble an incredibly talented staff that led us to the highest customer satisfaction scores in company’s 40+ year history, the highest employee satisfaction scores in the company history, and numerous other awards.  I was paid well and was able to provide for my family comfortably in this career.  It was easy to see the many ways that God blessed me.

 My second career was in the Christian retail industry when I owned and operated a Christian bookstore for more than 9 years and later managed a church-owned bookstore for another few years.  Both of these were first-class operations with great facilities and were well-received in their respective communities.  Both stores eventually closed, however, because they reached a point where they were no longer able to generate enough profit to remain self-sustaining.  “How is that a success?  If the businesses closed, doesn’t that mean that God failed to bless you in them?  I can see how God blessed you in your first career, but this doesn’t look like prosperity and blessings to me.”  The reality is that God poured out blessings on me in both of these Christian bookstore experiences even if it wasn’t all in the form of U.S. currency.   He enriched my life and my family through my first bookstore experience and the bookstore was transformative in the lives of both of my sons.  Their spiritual journeys were dramatically altered by their association with the ministry of Christian bookselling.  An unknown number of lives were changed for all of eternity through the ministry of both of these bookstores and that is prosperity and blessings in their purest and richest forms.  I would not trade those blessings for the billions of dollars that Bernie Madoff stole from his investors.

I’ve been asked I ever felt betrayed by God in my Christian bookstore experiences  . . . after all, I gave-up a thriving and lucrative first career to follow God’s call into this next endeavor.  The short answer to that question is, “No.”  I was able to see how God blessed me because He had already changed my perspective on “success” before I opened the door of the bookstore.  I had never defined success solely in terms of money but I have to confess that it was part of how I defined it.  I understood that success was not necessarily continuing to “climb the corporate ladder” because I had already turned down opportunities to do just that.  God was changing my understanding of needs and quality of life.  I was learning that providing for my family was going to look different that I had previously understood. 

God had used my first career to teach me skills that I would use effectively in my second career.  I understand and accept that there have been dramatic changes in bookselling and in retail, in general.  The consolidation that’s occurring in that industry is the same transition that occurred in hardware industry, the drugstore industry, and many others in the last 20+ years.  Was I sad to see those bookstores close?  Yes, but only because I experienced and witnessed many blessings during that season of my life but I trust God for what He has for me next. 

I’m now beginning a new season of my life as a free-lance writer and I’m convinced that God will shower His blessings on me here, as well.  Will I make a lot on money writing?  It doesn’t matter because I trust God for the “abundant life” that He promises His followers and I’ll trust Him to decide what that looks like.  He’s already opened doors and provided opportunities for me much sooner that I might have imagined.  I’ve contracted to write several articles for the trade journal of the Christian retail industry where I can share with other Christian retailers what I have learned and can continue to resource those that are serving there.  I’ve already been published in both local and national magazines and am evaluating other opportunities, as well. 

God is indeed “enlarging my territory” and revealing His plan to “prosper and not harm” me, as the scriptures say, but He’s doing it in a way far greater than the prosperity theology preachers ever imagined.   

Ken blogs at www.kenwords.com and has written for Relevant Magazine, MTLmagazine.com, Bay Area Christian Family, Coastal Christian Family, and CBA Retailer+Resources.