The Book, "Under God's Umbrella"- Your Comments and Reflections

 Dear Family and Friends,

You are invited below to comment or add to the story that has been told in this book:

"Under God's Umbrella- A Pilgrimage through Life" 
ISBN # - Hardcover: 979-8-8229-0047-9
Paperback: 979-8-8229-0048-6
Author: Robert Mann Hartley

                            Available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and elsewhere.                        

Feel free to use links to pictures or to your own story, if that is useful.  

Thank you, blessings, Rob 

The Book, "Under God's Umbrella"- Thoughts on Chapter 2- Glimpses of God

 Worldviews

In Chapter 2, "Glimpses of God," I write about being given a great gift.  The gift I was offered as a young person was a way to understand this world and myself in it.  This was a worldview that reflected God's own perspective and purpose for His creation, and for me.  This world will offer us its own perspectives; we know this as a materialistic perspective or secular perspective on life.  I write about my encounters with these worldviews in Chapter 4. 

Had I not been given this God-perspective, and if it had not been built upon and reinforced in ways I writer about in Chapter 7, my life would have been greatly diminished and impoverished. That is as clear to me as the nose on my face (given that I have a "Hartley nose," that is saying something).  In fact, I think that would have been the end of my story, at least a story worth writing about. 

Chapter 2 talks about how this Godly worldview was conveyed to me.  It describes a confluence of four streams that let me know I was a child of God and an inheritor of something reaching far beyond this world and far bigger than myself.  Those four streams were: my Godly parents; my church family at St. Andrews, Mt. Pleasant; my schooling at Porter; and my experiencing Kanuga Conference Center as my "Thin Place" with God.

These early experiences were life-shaping, and I do not think at all that I am exaggerating to think that they were also life-saving experiences.  They gave me life in abundance as Jesus talks about in John10:10 (life to the full as some translations have it).   Thanks be to God!

"The Book "Under God's Umbrella"- Thoughts on Chapter 3, p.28- Another Glimpse of God

Discovering God in Nature...  

It is for me a profound thing that God has ordered the universe such that the cognitive minds He created can explore the intricacies of His handiwork. Dr. Stephen Meyer's book that I reference on page 28 says this about Sir Isaac Newton: "Not only did he [Newton] extol the order and uniformity of nature as a reflection of God's character and superintending care of creation; he argued for the existence of God based on the design evident in nature- in short, for a “God Hypothesis."(1) 

Newton wrote, “Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.”  Modern molecular biologists explain how the propagation of life depends on the intricate coding found in DNA but stops short of explaining where such a coding can come from."

Nature reveals the reality, character, and attributes of God.   I know this instinctively but also enjoy having it reenforced with the science of such scientist as Meyer, Davies and Polkinghorne.  John Polkinghorne, Cambridge physicist, provided some of my favorite reading.  I am attracted to Dr. Polkinghorne not just because of how his physics developed my understanding of God in nature, but also because he is an Anglican Priest as I am.

(1) Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries that Reveal the Mind behind the Universe, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2021

"Under God's Umbrella"- Thoughts on Chapter 7- Shining Rock Wilderness

 

In chapter 7 of this book, I share about my family's life together while living in Indian Land, SC.  A great joy of the Indian Land years for both Nancy and me was raising up Robin and Jimmy to become the fine young men that they are today.  A large component of that joy for me were the many hiking, camping, and backpacking adventures I went on with the two boys.  A place called Shining Rock Wilderness became iconic of our times in the backwoods.  

Shining Rock Wilderness is part of Pisgah National Forest in the Great Smoky Mountains just northwest of the Blueridge Parkway which was easily accessible from our home near Charlotte.  When Robin and Jimmy were young boys, I would take them backpacking with me, and before I knew it, they were young men taking me backpacking with them.  These were great outings and great memories.

Robin took his first backpacking trip into Shining Rock Wilderness when he was first big enough to strap on a backpack.  Jimmy followed suit.  The thing about our venturing into Shining Rock Wilderness, however, was that we seemed to have a propensity for getting lost.  It didn’t mean we couldn’t eventually find our way to where we were wanting to go, but it could mean that a three-hour hike would turn into half-day hike to get to our planned campsite. 

Nancy’s brother Jim and I took Robin on his first backpacking trip to Shing Rock, and, yes, we got lost.  We followed one stream thinking it was a different stream.  We camped alongside the stream that night in a delightful spot but knowing that we weren’t at all where we wanted to be.   The next morning was a Sunday.  We climbed out onto the rocks in the middle of the stream, the air crisp and the sun bright, and we sat on those rocks, read scripture and said prayers to honor the Lord on the Lord’s Day.  I told Robin he could pick the scripture if he wanted to, and without much hesitation he picked John1.  I was a bit stunned at that, and at the appropriateness of the reading.  

We continued upstream that day and climbed a waterfall to get to our planned campsite for next night.  It was a greater adventure than if we had not gotten lost.

Once while backpacking in Shining Rock, Jimmy picked up an attractive looking rock. He was still young enough to believe some of my nonsense, so I told him that was no ordinary rock, it was an ancient Indian throwing stone.  Jimmy collected many rocks in his backpack that day until we had to stop and encourage him to lighten his load.  Thinking back, I realize that neither boy thought my Indian throwing stone thing was very funny.

A close friend, Bill Goodwin, has two boys matching the ages of Robin and Jimmy, and we would often go hiking, camping, and backpacking with together.  Bill and I loved cooking big campfire breakfasts, and one of the boys could easily end up with a cast iron skillet strapped to his backpack.  

Alex, Tommy, Rob and Jimmy are best friend to this day and Godfathers to each other’s children. 

 

"Under God's Umbrella"- Thoughts on Chapter 10- A Tribute to Thomas Weeks

One of my favorite memories of my time as vicar of Saint John's, Clearwater, SC was my friendship with a homeless man named Thomas Weeks.  We spent a great deal of time together, and despite his particular neurosis, he was quite enjoyable.  He would often meet me at the church first thing in the morning having walked down from wherever he had stayed that night. I would find him sitting in our memorial garden waiting for me.  He would tell me that Saint Francis (a statue in the garden) and he had developed quite a good relationship, and he enjoyed spending time with him.  Thomas would hang around the church and perhaps do an odd job or two until I was ready to go out to do some visiting. He would stay in the car while I visited, but seemed to enjoy simply riding with me.  

Thomas would tell jokes and stories and was quite an entertaining man.  He would say that it was his job to get my "dolphins" going (referring endorphins) by making me laugh.  He considered me far too serious. 

Thomas was in his early seventies when I met him.  One couldn't talk to Thomas long before he would go into the story of his mother giving him up for adoption at age seven and the trauma of growing up in an Catholic orphanage.  A spirit of rejection and abandonment had prevented him from functioning normally and consistently throughout his life.  It kept Thomas homeless and alone.  

Thomas would not give people a chance to abandon him by abandoning them first. His all-to-familiar pattern was to buy a bus ticket, once he got his monthly check from DSS, and would take off.  Thomas rode up or down the eastern seaboard from Miami to Philadelphia, until he would run out of money.  I received many calls from emergency rooms telling me that Thomas was there suffering from dehydration, low potassium, anemia, or the such.  Someone would usually buy him a bus ticket back to North Augusta.  I called him the last of the great hobos.

During the time I knew Thomas, North Augusta and Horse Creek Valley were home for him, at least as close to a home as he had.    I insisted that he was getting too old to be on the road but expressing too much care and concern just played into his neurosis.  Nancy and I invited Thomas to live with us, which he did for a while.  From time to time his wanderlust would set in, and he would be gone.  He would always come back, until one day, he didn't.

Thomas always sat in the same chair in our den, the chair I now regularly use these days.  He would watch TV for hours and would habitually swing his feet as he watched TV.  His cheap rubber-soled shoes left marks on the carpet at the foot of that chair.  Eventually, Nancy was able to get the marks out of the carpet, but in a way, I hated to see the marks go.

Thomas was staying with us during Christmas of 2008.  We had our extended family with us for the holiday.  They brought presents for Thomas just like they did for everyone else, and Thomas had his place at our Christmas dinner table between all the cousins.  I suspected this was too much for Thomas, and sure enough, the next day, I looked out the front window and saw him catching a ride with a workman that had done some repairs on our house.  The workman later told me gave him a ride to the bus station, which I had suspected was the case.   That was the last I saw of Thomas, and sadly, I stopped getting calls from emergency rooms up and down the eastern seaboard.  I loved that old hobo.