Essays

By Henry A. Buchanan

Essays is Doctor Buchanans thoughts on just about everything. Here he tells the reader what he knows about the society we live in and what he believes about the way human society ought to be.

Sometimes the author has his tongue in his cheek, and sometimes he has his poison pen in his hand, but always he is seeking to express the Truth that Life has taught him in his ninety years. His essays are sometimes his own experiences and sometimes they are his reflection on the parade of Life that he watches and has recorded over a period of many years. The essays are political; they are religious; they are personal. They are always an attempt to grasp Truth by the forelock and to wrestle manfully with his adversary.

Buchanans Essays cover the range from an easy approach to life at home to a serious attempt at public office. It is his understanding of ancient mythology that sets his work apart and opens it to vistas of a modern view of Man and God.

In his art of piddlin and doing nothing Buchanan reveals a hidden achiever and when he writes about Man and God he reveals the mind of the minister struggling to understand himself and the people he feels God has made his responsibility because of his calling to be a minister of the Gospel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468541540

Henry A. Buchanan

Henry Alfred Buchanan was born in Georgia more than ninety years ago. He grew up on a red dirt farm near Macon and attended church at Mount Zion Baptist Church. The Lord called him to preach; he studied at Mercer University, then at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary where he earned the degree of Doctor of Theology. Doctor Buchanan loved the heroes of the Bible from his boyhood. And he takes the teachings of Jesus very seriously. He always wondered where Cain and Able got their wives, and who Cain feared would kill him. He marveled at the falling of the walls of Jericho. He wanted to find the meaning of it all. Buchanan was born to write, and he has written twenty-seven books and some newspaper and magazine articles. He did most of his work in Kentucky, but moved to Texas because that’s where the Georgia girl, Anne Ellis, lives. They married. In Texas he keeps on writing and there may be another book after Myths in the Bible. Watch for it!

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© 2012 Henry A. Buchanan. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 2/15/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-4155-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-4154-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012900503

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

I dedicate this book to my niece, Lyn Rhodes, who tells me that she reads my books over and over and over while she waits for the next one.

Contents

PREFACE

ESSAY ONE:

I WRITE

ESSAY TWO:

ON SPEAKING ENGLISH

ESSAY THREE:

I HAVE SEEN THE NEW SOUTH

ESSAY FOUR:

WALDEN – NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

ESSAY FIVE:

THE DEVIL YOU SAY!!!

ESSAY SIX:

HOW TO DO NOTHING…..THE RIGHT WAY

ESSAY SEVEN:

THE TURNING ABOUT OF MORAL VALUES

ESSAY EIGHT:

A REMENISCENCE ABOUT THE SHELLMAN EXPERIENCE IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING MY FIRING BY THE CHURCH

ESSAY NINE:

HOW TO LOSE BIG IN A LITTLE ELECTION

ESSAY TEN:

AMERICA IN PERIL

ESSAY ELEVEN:

MURDER AND MERCY KILLING

ESSAY TWELVE:

ARE WE GODS OR MEN?

ESSAY THIRTEEN:

AND GOD MADE MAN

ESSAY FOURTEEN:

BADLY BLUNDERING PRESIDENTS

ESSAY FIFTEEN:

FEBRUARY

ESSAY SIXTEEN:

EASTER

ESSAY SEVENTEEN:

ON HEAVEN AND HELL

ESSAY EIGHTEEN:

INTERPRETING THE MYTH OF MAN

ESSAY NINETEEN:

IN PRAISE OF PIDDLIN’

ESSAY TWENTY:

LONELINESS AND MARRIAGE

ESSAY TWENTY-ONE:

OF HORSESHOES AND KINGDOMS

ESSAY TWENTY-TWO:

ONE AT A TIME

ESSAY TWENTY-THREE:

ON THE VALUE OF ART

ESSAY TWENTY-FOUR:

THE MOCKINGBIRD SINGS AGAIN

ESSAY TWENTY-FIVE:

ABORTION, RIGHT OR WRONG

ESSAY TWENTY-SIX:

STRANGE WEATHERISMS

ESSAY TWENTY-SEVEN:

THE CHRIST MYTH

ESSAY TWENTY-EIGHT:

THE LORD’S SUPPER

ESSAY TWENTY-NINE:

THE BIRDS

ESSAY THIRTY:

RETURN TO SHELLMAN

ESSAY THIRTY-ONE:

TO GOD THROUGH MAN

ESSAY THIRTY-TWO:

TSUNAMI

ESSAY THIRTY-THREE:

THE PICTURES AT ABU GHRAIB

ESSAY THIRTY-FOUR:

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ‘GOOD MORNING?’

ESSAY THIRTY-FIVE:

WHAT I AM DOING

ESSAY THIRTY-SIX:

THIS I BELIEVE

EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

PREFACE

I am publishing this book of essays because I believe that a man who has written and published two dozen books of fiction, humor and even an attempt at history, ought to explain himself. When I have written my best fiction people have assumed that I was confessing my own sins. When I have made my efforts at humor, others have suspected me of concealing some anger at the human race. And, when I did attempt a history of a critical moment in time – The Shellman Story – my critics said it didn’t happen and blocked the sale of the book.

So I have decided to come clean and reveal myself, naked and unadorned, in these essays. To tell you what I believe and not put it in the words of someone I have created to speak for me. I am, unabashedly and without any apology, a follower of Jesus of Nazareth, known as the Christ, the Anointed One and hailed by the church as the Son of God. When I say I am a follower I realize that like Peter, I follow from afar, but I also know an intimacy that enables me to live quite comfortably with Him without attributing to His Person either the outrageous deeds that are claimed in the Creeds, or the joy killing restrictions that some have clothed him with. I take what He said seriously, especially what He said about the way I should relate to other people. I do not attribute to Him omniscience in those areas of human life which He did not experience (marriage, for instance) nor do I worry that He will disapprove of my humanness, but I see in Him the Supreme Mythical Figure of all times and I refuse to limit Him to what some consider the facts that can be proved by reference to the Bible.

Here, then, are my essays. They cover everything from my theology to my peculiar form of humor. I began them in Kentucky and I have continued to shape them in Texas, but I, the man who wrote them, am a native Georgian and these essays reflect the red clay that still clings to my feet and my fingers are still gnarled by the contact with the plow handles which I grasped so tenaciously as I guided my plow in that hard iron-filled soil that gave birth to me and shaped the man who once was the fearful small boy known as Alfie, the one in my best stories.

ESSAY ONE:

I WRITE

I am the teller of many tales. Unlike Martin Luther King, Jr., I never had a Dream. I had a Vision. Not the American Dream; the Vision of a nation not living up to its promise of equality and justice for all.

Unlike Rosa Parks, I did not sit down, never to be moved; I stood up and I was hit in the face by the unfairness and the injustice in the social order that is our nation. And by the disease of pride and ambition in the Church which is the Body of Christ.

But God spoke to me, and God said write the Words of Truth that I have given to you.

I wrote. And unlike John Grisham, my books never became best sellers. Some of the best of them hardly became sellers at all.

But the Truth was in them. Not facts. Life as it is. I saw Truth in the mythology become theology become creed. In the politics become political science become the American Way. In the war stories become death and heroism. In the love stories become a mirage become tragedy. In the Goat’s Tale become the story of Man and his folly and his wisdom. And in the Little Chicken Tales become the mystery and the paradox of the human family and its parody. I wrote those tales because they were Truth, and because God said to me Write!

I set out to tell many tales because life is a many-sided thing, and is not to be grasped whole. It is a Word become Flesh and walking among us, not always beautiful, sometimes of an ugly countenance and diseased.

I wanted to tell one story that is better than all other stories because that story would embody Truth. Instead I wrote many stories, each one of them holding in it a facet, a part of the Word become Flesh.

I leave to you the heritage of these tales. I don’t expect you to read them all. No. I leave them to my grandsons and yours. For they will wonder what sort of men and women we were, and they will read my tales, and they will know that we were men like all other men, and that I walked among these men and wrote these tales of their lives.

AUGUST 26, 2008

ESSAY TWO:

ON SPEAKING ENGLISH

From now on, Lady Golfers who compete here must speak English. No more French frills and other exotic linguistics on the golf links in the United States. Even the Chinese, struggling valiantly now to be solid gold in all sorts of games, must learn to speak English if they are going to swing a club here.

Since I never learned when I was young enough, and am now too old and crippled to swing a club, it doesn’t boil my blood, but I would like for all people, male and female, who speak publicly on radio and television to speak English. I am talking about some of the obvious refinements in common usage.

For instance, ‘you know.’ Nobody seems to be able to tell me anything without informing me that I already know. Nor answer a question without saying ‘you know.’ So why tell me what I already know? I listened for four minutes to the New York Times correspondent reporting on the Olympic Games. He told me ‘you know’ forty times before I stopped counting. How could I know? He was the one in China.

Then there is the use of superlatives for common, run of the mill things. Nobody can say a simple ‘yes’ anymore. It is ‘absolutely’ or ‘exactly.’ God is absolute and two plus two is exactly four. Everything else is subject to some modification if the conversants are listening to one another and thinking before replying.

‘Incredible’ has become oxymoronic. Why do people tell me something is ‘incredible’ but expect me to believe what I am being told? The other day I heard a report that half the people in some little town somewhere had been killed. The town was decimated the speaker concluded, leaving me to wonder just what did happen to the other ninety percent of unfortunates in that little town.

Never mind if people get their Latin garbled. We speak English, and they all have learned to say ‘decade.’ Nobody can open his mouth without letting a few ‘decades’ fall out. It seems that everything happens now in ten year cycles. The reporters are too lazy to make an accurate count, so they speak of ‘tens of thousands’ if it is a big turnout, and ‘tens of millions’ if it is a big robbery.

Line up and sign in, Lady Golfers, and learn to speak the King’s English, or at least the palaver of the people. We speak English here, you know. Absolutely! It’s Incredible! But it’s been that way for decades now.

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

ESSAY THREE:

I HAVE SEEN THE NEW SOUTH

The god Apollo loved the maiden princess Cassandra and he promised her the gift of prophecy in return for her favors. But she feared the god’s love and in the crucial moment she fled his embrace. He then attached the fateful rider to his gift. You will know what is to be, but when you tell it, nobody will believe you.

It was that way with me forty-four years ago when I wrote that letter to the editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I said the time had come to admit the black man to our American society, to concede his share in all our institutions and their benefits: the schools, the churches, the buses, the lunch counters. To embrace him as our brother.

My fellow Georgians said I was crazy. My native southland ejected me. You are a hundred years ahead of your time! some said to me. Others chimed in. "It will