a new protocol

"Could be cancer" is a curious thing to hear from your Doctor... especially since I didn't even have a Doctor two days prior.  I don't get sick.

In the past three weeks I have seen three Doctors who have poked, prodded, and plumbed the depths of my inner being. Tests confirmed their suspicions- a malignant neoplasm in my lower GI region... a fancy description of something that shouldn't be there.

It is said that people think of time in one of two ways:

   Those who see time in a linear direction, from left to right, with the past to their left and the future to their right, 

                    and

   Those who see time as spatial; the past is behind, the future is ahead, with distractions to the periphery. The former are observants, biding their time as life passes; the latter are participants, taking steps toward the mystery of a journey. I choose the latter. 

A diagnosis is not a distraction; it is a signpost, indicating a necessary change of course, a new protocol.

I visited Ed Currie yesterday. Ed is the founder of PuckerButt Pepper Company and breeder of the world's hottest chili pepper- the Carolina Reaper. Last year I interviewed Ed (you can read the interview here), shortly after receiving official status from Guinness World Records and receiving a House Resolution from the South Carolina House of Representatives for his contribution to South Carolina and medical research. I told him my diagnosis and that I wanted to include his pepper as part of my protocol.

He gave me a bottle of his latest test batch- HP63T, Test Batch No. 1.

It is the hottest Ed has developed to date... in the vicinity of 2,000,000 Scoville Units.

Carolina Reaper

Ed and I will have more conversations in the days to come.

Ed Currie and me in the sorting room at PuckerButt

The Poetry of Sacred Spaces

Unity Cemetery- Fort Mill, SC

     I sat in the cemetery yesterday... the old part. The stones are more interesting there. It is like the difference between walking through the historic district of an old town and driving through a modern subdivision. There is in the old section an individuality that speaks to me. The old stones say, "I was here, uniquely designed for my time." The new stones say, "Same, same, same..."




     The sun there was attempting to brighten the 'smooth cloudy' sky. The old-timers would say, "If it don't rain it's gonna miss a good chance." The Stars and Bars were waving in the morning breeze, flags of the Confederacy placed on graves, for this is South Carolina... the first state to secede from the United States of America. Here, in Unity Cemetery, the CSA flags remind visitors of a house divided. 


     It was here, in Fort Mill, SC, that the last Confederate Cabinet meeting was held. And it is here, I am told, that the only memorial to African Americans who fought for the confederacy stands.

African American CSA Memorial

     One epitaph in the cemetery reads,

There is a bright

region above,

We long to reach its

shore,

To join with the dear

ones we love,

Not lost, but gone before.

     The name on the stone is Nettie, my Mother's name. I've never known anyone else to carry that name.

     Cemeteries do not remind me of death... they remind me of lives lived. A grave is the ground we all have in common and yet graves are not 'common ground.' Our graves contain remnants of the Creator's handiwork- His poems. We are the image-bearers of a Holy God, and our graves remind others there are still sacred spaces.