To Do

This week:

• have septic cleaned out
• meet with sentence-level writing committee
• interview with search committee
• grade papers
• meet with American Studies group
• get Raleigh at school
• grade papers
• finish mowing the yard
• work out
• grade papers
• watch 24
• grade papers
• grade papers
• grade papers
• grade papers
• attend honors student presentation
• prepare for Speaking of Faith class
• attend honrs student presentation
• grade papers
• go to Wednesday Night Live
• lead Speaking of Faith class
• Praise Team rehearsal
• grade papers
• grade papers
• grade papers
• attend honors student presentation
• attend honors student presentation
• grade papers
• grade papers
• turn in grades
• attend graduation

Next week:

• go to DC with honors students
• sleep
• walk around
• eat
• see a movie (or two)
• return from DC
• mow the yard
• that's all!!!

Sense of Wonder

This morning I was walking from the parking lot to my office, when off to my right I heard the honk of geese. I looked up and could see a pair of them flying low on a course that would take them almost directly overhead. I watched them as I tend of watch everything in flight and listened to their unlovely chatter.

Several students on their way to an early class were within my field of vision, and I began looking from the geese to them, from them to the geese. The pair passed overhead, no more than 50 feet up and honking, and as far as I could tell not a single student looked up.

Where's their sense of wonder at the world? Or is my taking notice of the geese just another of my personal oddities?

Picture: walts.org/geese/

Eden Calling

I've always been fond of the images that the word "Eden" conjures up in my mind. Sometimes it's a garden, sometimes a forest with trees straight or twisted and a floor clear of undergrowth, sometimes just a quiet peaceful place. The place comes alive in the poetry of John Milton's Paradise Lost:

. . . a circling row
Of goodliest trees loaden with fairest fruit,
Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue,
Appeared, with gay enameled colors mixed;
On which the sun more glad impressed his beams
Than in fair evening cloud, or humid bow,
When God hath showered the earth: so lovely seemed
That landscape. . . .

When the Cody band was looking for a name years ago, one of us came up with the idea of "Eden Calling." We all loved it, as I recall, but the wife of one of the band members--a sharp-witted smart ass--heard the name and immediately said, "Dingdong," linking our fine name with the slogan for Avon cosmetics--"Dingdong, Avon calling." With our idea tainted so, we ended up sticking with the mundane name "Cody."



Well, Eden has reentered my life in the form of a wonderful new granddaughter. She was born April 18 at around 9:30. Mother and child are doing fine. Big sister Mackenzie and daddy Lane are thrilled. And so, it won't be long before I'll have two girls calling me Granddaddy.


Welcome, Eden!

Words & NUMB3R5

I love words. I love the sounds of them, the taste of them in my mouth and the aura of them in my mind. I love to hear them from the mouths of my friends and from the mouths children and preachers and strangers. I love to let words tumble through my mind singly or joined together in ideas, even if they keep me awake at night. I love to sing them. I love to watch them string across the page in response to some untranlatable language that passes between my mind and hands. I love to watch them come together, pushing and shoving and jostling into position, all for the simple pleasure of telling me a story or making me a poem.

Numbers? Not so much. Calendar days and the numbered hours move too fast, leaving me almost no time to savor them. Numbers tally up the dead and reduce them to statistics. Numbers jumble up on one side to become a majority that believes it's right simply because it has the greater numbers. Numbers pile up--or dwindle away--in dollars and cents. Numbers take away our names. I can be haunted by words, but numbers scare me. There's a difference.

Numbers scare me, especially around April 15. At that time of year, my numbers swirl around and settle nervously onto tax forms, waiting to be judged right or wrong by the IRS, which I like to call the Infernal Revenue Service.

I wish I could use my words instead of numbers to communicate with the governmental beast. I wish I could explain the weakness of my math. I wish I could say, "Can't I write you an essay or a story or a song? I'm much better with words than with numbers." And the beast would say, "Okay, sure." Then I would no longer dread tax time.

No one will be surprised that, given till the 17th of April to file, I filed on the 17th. The postal service's outgoing telephone message said mail would be collected until 11:59 p.m. More numbers. I nervously e-filed my numbers around 6:30 p.m. and reluctantly but dutifully delivered my check to the hands of the mail collector around 10:30.

Here's a good word: "sleep." Beautiful.

Friday the 13th

I've probably seen the movies, but I can never get it straight if the Friday the 13th series features Jason or Michael. Do I care? No. Anyway . . .

• look both ways before crossing the street


• chew your food well


• stay alert at the wheel


• don't fly anywhere (just kidding DSW!)


• don't approach animals that don't know who you are


• avoid becoming absent-mindedly obsessed with power outlets


• hold handrails going down (or up) the stairs

I'm sure I could sit here writing this list all afternoon, but it's time to go to Barberitos!


This particular Friday the 13th is the 264th birthday of Thomas Jefferson, perhaps the most intelligent man ever to be president of the United States of America. Here's one of my favorite passages from his book called Notes on the State of Virginia, published in 1787:


"I doubt whether the people of this country would suffer an execution for heresy, or a three years' imprisonment for not comprehending the mysteries of the Trinity. But is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent reliance? Is it government? Is this the kind of protection we receive in return for the rights we give up? Besides, the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going downhill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion."

"Dear Mother"

A song I wrote in 1980 and made a demo recording of in Nashville in 1982.

Dear Mother,
I hope this letter finds you well.
I'm still in Jerusalem
And I've got so much to tell
Of the things that Jesus does each day
And the people he helps along his way.
There are words he speaks to me at night
About the way, the truth, and the light.

Dear Mother,
I've never met a man like him.
He can heal the blind and raise the dead;
He can calm the waves and the wind.
There is only love in his eyes,
And I have come to realize
He's not like me or James or John.
I believe he is the Chosen One.

Yesterday, he called me the rock,
The rock of ages yet to come.
He said, "Peter, if you love me feed my sheep,
And tell the truth to everyone—
That as surely as the son rises
So shall the Son of Man rise again.

Dear Mother,
They nailed my master to the tree,
And it rained the day he gave his life
To take our sins and set us free.
But three days after he was dead,
He rose again just like he said.
Now I must go tell everyone
Of all the wondrous things he's done.
Yes, I must go tell everyone
About the rising of God's son.

I remember the day he called me the rock
The rock of ages yet to come.
He said, "Peter, if you love me feed my sheep,
And tell the truth to everyone—
That as surely as day comes after night
So shall the Son of Man come again.

Dear Mother,
I know he'll come again.

Words & Music by Michael Cody
Copyright: Gary Morris

http://faculty.etsu.edu/codym/song_Dear_Mother.mp3

Have a blessed Easter!

Betwixt Crucifixion and Resurrection

No matter what day of the week it was, what must this day betwixt the Crucifixion and the Resurrection have been like for those who had followed Jesus through his three-year ministry? We get a sense of what this day must have been like for Peter after having heard that cock crow after his third denial of his teacher and lived with that through the Crucifixion. We get a sense of what it was like for John--the disciple whom Jesus loved?--as he began trying to live up to the mandate from the cross: "Look, here's your mother!" We get a sense that Judas Iscariot was either dead or quickly on the way to being so.

I picture the eleven--minus Judas Iscariot--after the scattering in Gethsemane at least two nights before coming slowly back together somewhere in Jerusalem on this day. They are disillusioned and confused, to say the least, and they find it difficult to speak to or to make eye contact with one another. What talk they're able to muster tends toward trying to figure out just what the heck happened over these last few of days and how much danger they themselves are in by association. I doubt they'd made much headway in this when in the early hours of Sunday morning Mary from Magdala burst into their room with a breathless "I have seen the Lord."

I've begun wondering about one apostle in particular. Thaddaeus, I like to call him. The books of Matthew and Mark call him that. The books of Luke and Acts call him Judas, son of James. The book of John calls him Judas (not Iscariot). And it's in John that this man apparently gets his one moment of fame, one moment when everybody who has read the scriptures knows that he was there with the rest, most especially with Jesus. According to John 14:22, "Judas (not Iscariot) asked Jesus, 'Lord, what has happened that you are going to reveal yourself to us and not the the world?'" Then comes John 14:23-24: "Jesus answered him, 'Those who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will go to them and make our home with them. A person who doesn't love me doesnt' do what I say. I don't make up what you hear me say. What I say comes from the Father who sent me.'" Jesus goes on, but that's all for Thaddaeus--except for the assumption that he's with the others when Mary bursts in, that he's with the others when they're with Jesus in those last days after the Resurrection. That's all except for the mention of his name when he's with the others to cast lots to decide who will replace Judas Iscariot and bring their number back to twelve.

After so momentous an experience as three years in the inner circle of Jesus, what happened to Thaddaeus? Did he wander the Middle East or into India, preaching and teaching and witnessing to the risen Christ, never writing or being written about? Did he die of old age or martyrdom? Or did he return to Galilee and fade away? If so, how is that possible after what he witnessed and experienced? Maybe he returned to Galilee and started a little Christian assembly there with James, son of Alphaeus, another of the disappeared disciples. Maybe he changed his name and joined another lost disciple, Simon the Zealot, in his guerilla struggle against Roman occupation, and both disappeared together.

What in the world happened to Thaddaeus?

The Dusty Guitar

A few days ago my friend and former bandmate Mark posted a picture of his acoustic guitar sitting lonely in the corner of his music room. The image was familiar, but because my guitars and flute get fairly regular workouts these days, I couldn't quite place the sense of familiarity.

Then it hit me. The final section of my first novel, Gabriel's Songbook (unpublished), features a scene like that--a music room where a guitar and a piano sit untouched and gathering dust.

Then I was on Genesis Road, winding my way toward the cabin in the woods. Then easing into the driveway and coasting to a stop beneath the kitchen window. My Guild still lay in the trunk, so I got it out and wearily climbed the steps to the deck and slipped through the back door.

In my music room, I turned on a small lamp, looked at Uncle T's old Martin on its stand and lay down on the daybed without taking off my clothes.

I coughed and heard the sympathetic vibration of the Martin's d-string. I looked towards it but didn't get up in response to its call. Its faded and pitted finish testified to all it had been through with me since it had joined me for my move to Nashville so long ago. More and more these days, its strings stretched in silence, untouched, and its womanly curves waited and waited for the return of my passion and warm caresses.

I reached up and turned off the light.

My ancient upright piano filled the room with an earthy aroma of dust and old wood and sweat that reminded me of the tiny mountain church in which it had spent half a century or more. How many poundings had its keys taken in revivals back across those years? With what fervor had its strains of "Just As I Am" rung the walls of the old church and wrung the hearts of countless sinners through countless altar calls? After all that passion and soul, it surely felt dead and buried under my distracted and disheartened tinkerings.

"Maybe I won't be away much longer," I mumbled in the darkness. I reached out and took the guitar from its stand, laid it on my chest and wrapped my arms around it and fell asleep.

Fresh Horses

Today I was out mowing the yard, already the second mowing for the 2007 season. And I was thinking about the church I attend, Cherokee United Methodist, and the many changes looming in its near future. (More on these later.) While I was doing all this thinking, an old song of mine called "Fresh Horses" came to mind. The chorus includes the line that crept into my mind first: "The one thing you can count on is the changing." That's the way life is, no doubt. The only thing that seems certain is change.

Somewhere up ahead lies a dream

Of how things ought to be.

On open road you can see it from the high spots.

Somewhere plays a song

That tells the story of your life,

And some nights you can hear it barely within earshot.

You listen so hard at times

You think you're going crazy,

And you follow a star that keeps on

Disappearing every day.

It's a long hard ride from here to where you're going,

If you don't turn back or pull out of the race.

The one thing you can count on is the changing.

Fresh horses are always waiting along the way.

There are tears among the raindrops

And blue diamonds laid on ice.

Precious things are hidden in common places.

But among the treasures dangers lie

So ride with open eyes

In the search for common ground and common graces.

Parts of the journey

Seem to end in wasted motion.

Parts of the journey

Border on insanity.

It's a long hard ride from here to where you're going,

If you don't turn back or pull out of the race.

The one thing you can count on is the changing.

Fresh horses are always waiting along the way.

Words & Music by Michael Cody

Copyright: Gary Morris Music (ASCAP)

I wrote the song in 1989 or so, after reading a script for a film called Fresh Horses, which was going to star some of those '80s kids that were in The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire. I don't think the film had much success, but I got a good song out of reading the script. "Fresh Horses" was always a crowd favorite when the Cody band played. If you can follow the link below, you can hear our studio version of it. Listen carefully to the background vocals, and you'll hear my friend Mark (NBTA) singing along with me. That's also him playing one of the electric guitars.

http://faculty.etsu.edu/codym/song_Fresh%20Horses.mp3