Water Spirit

First Child a Daughter 

She brings me the deepest surest Love that any man could imagine. 
It is the kind that will never change nor diminish.
It is unique to a father-daughter relationship and I know it will never leave me.
Though I have struggles none are more difficult or as painful than those she encounters.
Nothing will bring me more abruptly to my knees than to see her hurt, confused, alone.
I thank God for providing me the life lesson of helping to raise up such a beautiful person.

*******

Growing up in south Florida on the Atlantic coast, water- more specifically salt water- became part of a personality trait for me.  I see these window decals now that say “Salt Life” and I am not sure what the context is for that logo, but I know how it applies to a young toe head boy.  So it was just a natural response that when our first child Maggie was a year old she took her first swimming lessons at Cobb Aquatic Center in Marietta, Georgia.

Now, I am not sure where the H2o genes came from. Her mother’s side was from the Midwest, landlocked southern Illinois; her namesake great grandma Maggie Sewell of coal mining, Harrisburg. This the Maggie Sewell who used to extend hospitality to the bootlegging Charlie Birger gang when they were in the area. The same Charlie Birger that was hanged in the Harrisburg town square. Our Maggie’s grandfather Herschel used to tell of being let out of school just so they could go watch. It was the last public hanging in the state of Illinois.

From the first time in that indoor pool, our Maggie took to the water like it was her natural habitat. Seeing your infant so at ease in a large body of water is comforting. When you see them free in the water, well it must be akin to a mother bird seeing their hatch lings learning how to fly from the nest. I was able to cross child drowning worry off the list.

From this point my oldest posted a litany of water related accomplishments.  I’ll never forget on a cruise to the Bahamas when she went snorkeling for the first time off a Caribbean sand bar. I remember hearing her laughing and talking with the fish. I could hear the conversation through her snorkel! She was also at peace swimming with the stingrays off Grand Cayman.  Her attraction to the water entered a new phase after we took her to see “The Little Mermaid” and she developed a lifelong kinship with Ariel, another redhead.

Then there was the swimming during the summer community leagues with the Smyrna Sharks. Her competitive father got choked up when he saw the look on her face after she touched first for the first time.  There were many ribbons and state meet finals.  The swimming took to year-round practice and meets with the Marietta Stingrays swim club.

When Maggie got into high school she began to hear the call to work with younger kids and so now she has responded to her call. She works as a manager at Swim Revolution in Smyrna/Vinings.

  How much more proud can a father be than to see his oldest daughter passing it on in the Spirit of the Living Water.

Happy Birthday and keep passing it on my beautiful and gifted Maggie. 

Amen, Dad, August 1, 2016

The Split in the Garden

Hold Hands with Abba

In the past couple of weeks the chaotic nature of the world has shown up on my doorstep. It might have first arrived around our Country's Independence Day Celebration.  I do not remember in younger days the fireworks in the neighborhoods starting a week before and continuing for a week after. It sure seems that way now, It made for a few sleepless nights. The awesome patriotic tenor of the day has lost some luster because of this contemporary practice. But that is not the main cause of this writer's recent turmoil. The underpinnings of the angst is a broken friendship, a relationship split.

Combine this personal loss with the mood of our country framed by the divide of party politics and chaos keeps knocking at the door, banging on the door! So I decided to go on a 40 day fast.  I did not have to go into the wilderness. The wilderness came to me. My program of faith induced me to double down on my prayer and meditation practices. I have resisted  my default isolating behavior by staying active in my fellowships. I am fasting from two worldly pseudo sustenances Facebook and Television.

About ten days into my fast in the wilderness, I began to relocate in the presence of my Creator. Chaos gave up knocking on my door. I thought I saw signs of a healing in the fracture of my special relationship. The day was bright and the forecast was clear. Then as Abba is want to do when we turn our backs on Him, he sent a violent storm and a different kind of fireworks into the night put me to restful sleep.

The next morning- the Sabbath- I awoke and in the Garden out my back door this is what I saw:

I am grateful for His good morning Great Rays!

I take nothing for granted these days.  I know the Spirit of the Universe is speaking to me in every moment and all I have to do is be willing to listen and look for His signs; His trail markers. During the rest of that same Sabbath day I saw signs that the spark of healing in the diminishing relationship was flickering away.

Then while sitting at my kitchen table having dinner there was a strange unfamiliar cracking, shredding noise just out back. I stopped eating and got up from the table and there in the same scene from the garden in the morning was an astonishing split that will not, nor cannot be put back together.

For me it is an act of God and a message. 

 The split, however, between God and His people can and will be put back together. See:
  2 Corinthians 5:16-20

Bradford Bosworth

July 2016

Monkey Business

The Grandstand View

Twenty-eight years ago at the front end of my second career in the broader hospitality and narrower beverage alcohol distribution industries, I found myself managing a restaurant in downtown Atlanta at the mega convention hotel Marriott Marquis.  Being this type of hotel property, huge city-wides were not unusual but the 1988 Democratic Convention was in a class of its own.

Three years prior I had started my career with Marriott and to this day I have never worked for a better company. The family founded and lead corporation carried traditional Judeo-Christian family core values and principles from the top down through the entire organization and permeated the whole corporate culture. The management truly valued its human resources. In my earliest days there I spent many hours behind the bar at the Grandstand Lounge hanging in the Atrium.

 When the 1988 Democratic National Convention rolled into town I was managing Pompanos Restaurant and Oyster Bar a white table cloth seafood eatery.  Somehow I got my hands on a poster for the convention. It is a very creative piece of graphic art. It reads: Democrats in Convention -Atlanta 1988.  In all the years since, I have been under the impression that it was the official poster of the convention. In preparations for this article, I did a Google search for- 1988 Democratic Convention poster- and found everything but a representation of this poster.

I decided to pin the poster to an easel and place it at the front of the restaurant by the hostess stand with markers and invite guests to sign it. Throughout the week it became quite a conversation piece.

Without a doubt the most popular topic of  "water cooler" type conversation was the autograph in the lower right of the poster reading Gary Hart .

Senator Hart ( D Colorado) had been one of the top candidates in quest for the Presidential nomination until a picture of him with a woman- who was not his wife- on a pleasure boat to the Bahamas showed up in newspapers nationwide. The icing on the cake and irony to end all ironies was that the name of the boat was "Monkey Business"!

Other notable signatures on the poster include,  Spencer Christian, Benjamin Hooks, Bill Gibson, Bob Kerrey and Billy Graham. There are many more VIP and common folk alike but perhaps the most telling autograph of all is that of the current California Governor Jerry Brown. I'll let the readers draw their own conclusions.

The framed collector's item has hung in my residence in all the years since and it still calls for "water cooler" conversations.

Final thoughts: When the Democrats were in convention here in 1988 I was not yet married to the women (Becky) who would become mother to our two beautiful and amazing daughters, though I met her there at the Marquis. The Omni Coliseum, ground zero for the convention, was still standing. Amazingly soon they will replace the Georgia Dome that replaced the Omni! Two of our most blessed southern writers, Lewis Grizzard and Furman Bisher were still alive and making me laugh and cry. And-with a sigh- the Clintons has not completely entered the political stage.

Bradford Bosworth

July 2016

A Devotion for the Day

Not Seeing Each Other Any More

Proverbs 3:5

There was a couple who met late in life. Both had been married and divorced, one more than once. Each had children and one had grandchildren. I am not completely certain but my guess is that they were deep in love with each other.  From a distance it looked that way, so I have been told. They did many things together and shared themselves with simple honesty and had a bond with the Holy Spirit- a divine connection.

If you talked to the man he would tell you his most cherished moments of the relationship were holding hands at mealtime and saying a graceful blessing together.  He would read to her at nighttime and she would fall asleep in his arms.  If you talked with the woman she would most likely tell you her favorite moment was holding hands in Church; with his reading to her at night a close second. After the first time with him in Church, she said that she had been waiting all her life to hold hands in Church with the special man in her life.  He was taken by that expression of affection.

These days one would not necessarily consider senior citizens proficient at or artful with communication via texting.  This couple had a simple and mutually smile inducing daily text exchange.  She typing out and sending, “Hey” and he replying with “Hi” or vice versa.  A day without this exchange was cause for concern.  Sadly, towards the end there were more days than not without “Hi” and “Hey”.

They had periods along the way where their connection would stretch and weaken but it would always come back together.  Then one day the world intruded and would not go away. As they began to rely more and more on their own understanding the divine connection frayed. Their relationship began to unravel ever more quickly. “Hi” and “Hey” vanished, washed away with tears.   In the final analysis the couple still loved each other but they were not seeing each other anymore.

Yahweh lead us back to the garden where we trust in you with all our heart, and in that place we would notice all your markers set before us and see each other foreve.  Amen

Bradford Bosworth

July 2016

Pitch Man

The Witness of Our Lives

A few months ago I was invited to participate in a leadership role on a Christian men's retreat. In my faith  journey I am part of numerous fellowships, some are coed but this particular one was men only.

As part of my service on this retreat I was asked to give a talk. The talk was titled "Christian Action".

I want to focus this post on a young man who I admire and respect immensely. His name is Tim Tebow.  Back in the fall of 2008 my life was adrift on a sea of despair and denial.  I had recently been through a drug treatment center and was about 30 days sober when I decided to turn on the SEC Football Championship.  Tebow is known for his strong Christian faith and had a practice of  writing bible verses on his eye black.  On this evening, I wanted to know what the scripture message was so I was one of the record number of people googling John 16:33 making it the number one google search term for that date.

My Christian Action message to the men on the retreat can be summed up with the statement. "It is the witness of our lives."  There are not many better examples of this idea that I can think of than Tim Tebow.  I'm sure it makes a difference that I am a big sports fan.  I was a fan of his at the time but after looking up that verse- which is a quote from Jesus -I had a bit of a different perspective. The man who chose this scripture had to be serious about his mission! The words are from the One Teacher and if we listen to these words and then search out "these things" that he told us. And if we try to live by them and assimilate them into our lives then we too have a chance to "overcome the world."

Pitch Man

Side Note: A little over a year later the NCAA banned "Eye Black Messages" in an edict that is now known as the "Tebow Rule". "The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." John 1:5

Amen Brother Tim

Bradford Bosworth

July, 2016