Every once in a while I think we all come across one of those particularly amazing individuals in our lives.
I met once such man several years ago when I was working for a national corporation here in Bowling Green, Ky., when I was a sales and service professional. I had met him once before in town prior to him coming work at our place of employment. But I didn't really know him or much about his background. Needless to say when he came to work for us, I got to know him pretty quickly and I witness him "set the woods on fire" as they say in the sales and service industry. As a service professional, he took me into new places that I knew what they look like from the outside but I had never been on the inside of them before. Because of his astonishing connections with people in our community and incredible sales capabilities, he made those things happen. A lot of those places were government buildings and entities where the general public was not allowed. One such place was the TVA Paradise Fossil Fuel plant in Drakesboro, Ky., in Muhlenberg County. That place was daunting! I was overwhelmed when I entered the gates to service. I had no clue where to go or what to do because that place was humongous. Plus the workers always seemed preoccupied with their work and seemed to be bothered in order to take time help out a third party service person. Another place was a dynamite manufacturing plant in Muhlenberg County also. I had to have a security clearance to get in there plus wear booties on my shoes while I was escorted around because I go into rooms where they had top secret high tech water jet laser cutters and things of that nature. Once there was a scientist from Israel there inspecting products as I was working. I was always the one man in a uniform driving a white Ford Ranger pickup truck around Bowling Green and Southcentral Kentucky entering these places on a mission. He was able land some high dollar service accounts and quickly rose to be one of the top sales person in the company. He won all kinds of sales awards in his short career with us. In the meantime, he helped me make a lot of money during those years he was employed with us I remember.
His name was the late Dr. Lee E. Elias. The following was taken from his obituary in the Bowling Green Daily News. "He was originally from Atlanta and was a highly decorated Marine and Army Vietnam veteran. He served three tours of combat duty with the 3rd Marine Division in Force Reconnaissance. He later entered the Army as medic in Korea and Hawaii. Among the many honors head had received was the Soldier's Medal for saving a life at the risk of his own. He was also Southern Baptist Minister and for many years he ministered to college students on the campus of Baylor University, Texas Christian University and Western Kentucky University." I remember Dr. Elias fondly and I remember we had several civil debates on being a Protestant vs. being a Catholic since I was a former Baptist and then Catholic convert. But I stood my ground with him and he respected my beliefs about being a Catholic. I also tested my faith too during those conversations. One day he offered to make me a Kentucky Colonel. He said he had connections with the charitable organization in Louisville since he was a Kentucky Colonel himself and that he knew the Kentucky governor personally. I thanked and then asked him why he wanted to do that for me. He said he respected me and that I was a hard worker for our company. He also said I had helped him achieve his sales goals. I thanked him again and a few weeks later, I received my certificate in the mail. I had it framed and it still hangs on my wall in the den at home to this day where I have lived for 25 years now. And proudly tell them world that I am Kentucky Colonel thanks to Dr. Elias.
The last time I saw Dr. Elias was the parking lot of where we worked in 2005. He had just gotten back from ministering to the people in need in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina had hit down there in Louisiana and along the Gulf Coast. He was a solid man of God and fearless. He was also a highly educated man with a keen sense of intellect and humor. Apparently, he passed away about four years later in 2009 from complications of an illness that had lingered on for years after the he time he spent in the Vietnam during the war. R.I.P. Dr. Elias. I am sure you are missed by all who knew and loved you.
And I also an observer of dogs. Especially when I'm walking my eight year-old Red Merle AKC Australian Shepherd named "Jude." on the Greenway close to my house. I pretty much walk him every morning. I think a lot and wonder about everything especially dogs. Mainly, I watch Jude walk and sniff. I see him smiling and how happy he is when he goes for a dog walk with his human. He loves to go for walks on the Greenway. (A dog's sense of smell is 10,000 to 100,000 times more acute than a human's. According to Wikipedia 'For every scent receptor a human has, a dog has about 50.') As I walk Jude in his harness and a retractable leash, I can keep a close eye on Jude and close to me. The street that the Greenway is located next to the CSX railroad tracks and is very dangerous because vehicles tend to spend up and down the road and they do not obvisouly go the speed limit of 35 miles per hour as posted with the proper signage. It is very dangerous if a dog is not on a leash. Plus we have a leash law in the city of Bowling Green.
However, as Jude walks, he keeps his nose close to the ground sniffing the grass and blades of long grass stems that have turned brown and dried out from the fall weather not far from the railroad tracks. He always sniffs the dried leaves too laying on the ground and the remnants of dried out dog poop too from other dogs as well as their markings of dog pee I am sure. I wonder what Jude is thinking and what calculations are adding up in his little doggie mind. Is he thinking about the time period that the other dog was just there? Are the dogs sending him some sort of signal or message? Those are the things I wonder about. Just what is Jude thinking? I wish I knew.
I have read that dogs can communicate by other dog's poop and pee left on the ground. (Again, according to Wikipedia, "Dogs have a keen sense of smell and use their urine and feces to mark their territory and communicate with dogs. This marking behavior helps establish their presence in their environment.) Jude thinks he owns the Greenway apparently just like he thinks he's the boss of our house. I admit, we have spoiled him rotten. He probably owns more dog toys than any other dog in Bowling Green. And he always gets the best vet care, dog food and doggie daycare and overnight boarding that money can buy. Remember, "The Puppy Rules!"
Dogs have a strong sense of belonging. Especially to a human family or to "a pack" as I like to say. Jude gets extremely excited when the Christmas season arrives. The day after Thanksgiving, I go to the attic pulldown stairs in the hallway of our house and pull the stairs down. Then I climb up into the attic and take down the artificial Christmas tree and decorations. He starts to run around the house huffing and puffing and begins to bark. He gets real excited! Then we play Christmas music and he gets even more excited. I made the mistake that of telling him early this year that Santa Clause was going to bring him some Christmas presents like he always does and he started looking to the top of the book shelf where we always try to hide his presents. He kept looking and whining. Eventually, he just laid down on the floor and kept looking up at the top of the book shelf and whining into the evening. But there were no presents to be found. This went on for several hours. Poor little fella. Now my wife and I have agreed not to bring it about the presents again until it gets closer to Christmas.
We treat Jude like he is our child. Our only grown son is grown and lives in Nashville plus he is married now. So Jude came into our lives eight years ago and filled the empty nest syndrome. This Christmas season be sure to share the Christmas spirit and joy with your pets whether you have dogs or cats or any other critter. Be grateful for them because they know too when you are happy because they can sense how you feel. They feed off your vibes and energy. If they sense when you are happy or not. If you are are happy and feel happy and loved. Plus they feel safe and secure in the furever home. God Bless you and Merry Christmas to all from Galen, Patty and Jude!
Yesterday as my wife, Patty, and I sat in a dark movie theater among many other moviegoers here in Bowling Green, Ky., tears started to well up in my eyes as I watched a man in a wheelchair on the big screen screaming "I'm dying, I'm dying" from a bad LSD trip.
Lonnie Frisbee, the longhair Jesus looking young man and assistant pastor of Calvary Chapel in Southern California comforted the man in the big tent next to the small church that they had outgrown. Frisbee said a prayer over the man in the wheelchair and then asked the congregation to also to get close to the man and pray over him. He was afflicted with drug addiction as many of the young people in the congregation who had been addicted or experimented with drugs at one time or another in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Some of them had been a part of the Haight-Ashbury hippie scene in San Fransisco where the counterculture movement started and the Southern California acid rock music culture began. The new movie "Jesus Revolution" starring Kelsey Grammar as Calvary Chapel Pastor, Chuck Smith, Jonathan Roomie as Lonnie Frisbee and Joel Courtney as Greg Laurie among many others is a great movie in my opinion. It's about the true story of a national spiritual awakening in the early 70's and its origins within a community of teenage hippies of Southern California. The story and message of the movie is based on a book by one of the movements leaders called "Jesus Freaks" written by Pastor Greg Laurie. Laurie is currently serves as the senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship based in Riverside, Calif.
Even though, I did not grow up in Southern California back in those days, the movie hit home for me. I grew up down South in Memphis, Tenn., and North Mississippi. I was just a kid when the Jesus Revolution or Movement was happening. I remember when I was eight, nine or even 10 years-old watching the Vietnam newsreels on the local news, the Moon landings, the Manson murders, the Watergate trials involving President Nixon and I remember, of course, the hippie movement and the rock & roll drug scene and culture of its day. Mainly because of mainstream media such as television, newspapers and magazines, I was able to keep up with what was going on the world like most Americans did back in those when we only had three television channels, one telephone line and Saturday morning cartoons. However, I was personally affected by the Jesus Revolution when its tentacles stretched all the way to the American South in the early 1970's and early 1980's. My older brother had attended a big revival somewhere in Memphis where the Jesus movement speakers appeared and he brought home a printed t-shirt home with a hand on the back of it with a finger pointing up with letters that stated, "One Way." I used to wear it all the time while riding my bicycle on the streets of Memphis and he did not know about it. Lol.
I was not much of churchgoer while growing up in Memphis in the 1960's and early 1970's. Also, neither when I first move to North Mississippi as a teenager in the late 1970's. However, I did get a taste of the Catholic faith in 1980 when I lived with my sister and brother-in-law in Savannah, Tenn., for six months. Then I was baptized as a Baptist at my mother's church in Memphis but I did not make a full commitment to the faith. I attended some but not regularly. However, when I attended Ole Miss (the University of Mississippi) in Oxford, Miss., for five years in the early 1980's, I joined Campus Crusade For Christ for a semester in the fall of 1983 which is now known as just simply "Cru." Campus Crusade For Christ had joined forces with the Jesus Movement in 1972 and organized a week-long International Student Congress on Evangelism at the Cotton Bowl Stadium in Dallas known as Explo '72. It featured evangelism and discipleship training and contemporary music events. It was attended by more than 80,000 college and high school students and was nicknamed as the "Christian Woodstock" in the media. At the end of 1983, I attended KC 83, a Christian conference organized by Campus Crusade For Christ where 27,000 college students had gathered under one roof at a convention center in Kansas City to hear Billy Graham, Josh McDowell and Bill Bright among many others speak as well as attend contemporary christian music concerts on New Years Eve. We even went out into the City of Kansas City to knock on doors in neighborhoods to share our Christian faith with city residents. Later on, after I met my wife in 1986 while at Ole Miss, we were married civilly and later married in the Catholic faith when I converted to Catholcism. I have been a faithful Catholic and married to the same woman for the last 37 years. Sacramental marriage is an institution in the Catholic Church and I honor this with high regard with Jesus Christ being in the center of our marriage I can honestly say. "Til Death Us Do Part"-1549 Book of Common Prayer.
Needless to say, the memories from growing up down South came flooding back to my mind while watching this movie at the theater reminding me of every step of my faith journey throughout my lifetime. I highly recommend this movie regardless if you are Christian or not. It might just reignite a spark in you.
