FRANKFORT —
Time moves and the world changes, but in Kentucky time moves and we don’t seem to change much.
I love this place. I love its people, so colorful and interesting and many of them full of wisdom. I love the variety and beauty of its geography. Kentucky’s people are usually warmhearted and they mostly love their land, recognizing how much it shaped who they are – even while they often cruelly mistreat it.
We stubbornly resist change. I understand the impulse; I feel it especially as I grow older. I see the things which made and shaped me changing or disappearing. The little farm where I grew up is covered by houses and driveways which have replaced the fields. The hedgerows and pathways I once walked, just my dog and I, and that enormous presence all around me I believed was God.
I see people who enriched my life and nurtured me leaving forever. The wise men and women, the storytellers, the human markers of my heritage and the past which as Faulkner observed is never dead, it’s not even past. They live now in my soul and my memory, though that’s a poor refuge compared to their real presence.
I read the poems, novels and short stories of Wendell Berry and feel the pain of his wisdom as he laments the passing of elders, of their old and simpler ways that made us more human, and the ravaging and paving of the good earth that sustained them and which must sustain us in spite of what we continue to do to it.
But I also see the world changing sometimes in good ways and Kentucky slipping farther behind. We are insulated, suspicious of change and those not like us or who think a bit differently.
Mark Twain famously said: “When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Kentucky, because everything there happens 20 years after it happens anywhere else.”
We can’t prevent the future. Instead of fearing the future is out to get us – the wonderfully apt description by Lexington Herald-Leader editorial writer Jamie Lucke – we might recognize it’s already here.
There must be a way to accept the future and allow our intellectual and spiritual horizons to expand while we honor the past and preserve what was good about it. Kentucky welcomes new machines of destruction but rarely new people and ideas which might enrich us in non-material ways.
Can’t we live our values as well as proclaim them? If we are in fact a Christian culture, shouldn’t we act toward others with a Christian attitude, to approach those who seem different from us with the wisdom and knowledge that they too are children of God? Perhaps their differences and different ideas are just as much God’s creations as we and ours are. Shouldn’t we try to emulate the tolerance and humility of the New Testament?
Maybe we ought to listen to Abraham Lincoln. During the Civil War, Lincoln was asked if God was on his side.
“Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side,” said the President, “my greatest concern is to be on God’s side.”
We should question new ideas, but we ought to question our own as well, and we ought to question others’ with an open mind. They needn’t always be feared or reviled. God’s universe has plenty of room for all of us.
For if we are indeed the children of God, we must acknowledge so are they and we are more alike than we are different.
Ronnie Ellis writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@cnhi.com. Follow CNHI News Service stories on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cnhifrankfort.
Viewpoints
We’re more alike than we know
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Graduation Day
It is that time of year again.
Some years ago, I was invited to speak at the graduation ceremonies of a liberal arts college. Later, many in the audience told me they expected a very political speech. Some of them were relieved; others were disappointed. I don't do politics at graduation.
Graduation is about life.
My high school graduation was OK. I gave a speech. My family was there, intact, probably as happy as they ever were (But did I know?). We went out for Chinese food afterward. -
Coal problem worth tackling in Washington and Frankfort
Despite hysterical cries from radical environmentalists, neither Sen. Rand Paul’s Defense of Environment and Property Act nor Sen. Mitch McConnell’s Coal Jobs Protection Act would allow activities that bring harm to Kentucky’s wildlife or waterways for the sake of propping up the coal industry.
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Peter Perlman — Life lessons from a lawyer’s lawyer
One of the great moments of my life was sitting next to legendary Louisville attorney Frank Haddad at a luncheon when he learned he had received the first Peter Perlman Outstanding Trial Lawyer award from the Kentucky Academy of Trial Lawyers.
As they started his bio, the surprised Frank started crying like a baby. A sudden heart attack took him less than a year later. Winning the Perlman award was the crowning achievement of his career. -
Credit score insanity
Frequently, people stop me and ask me personal finance questions.
The most common is how to improve their credit history score.
If you need to improve your credit score, it means you have lousy credit. Before fixing the score, people need to ask how their credit got so bad to begin with. -
‘Tells’ about who will blow their money
Kentucky Derby week is one where gambling takes a forefront in my life. Along with the non-stop activities in my home state, I am speaking at a dinner for the Society of Settlement Professionals in Las Vegas and a film crew from Italy is flying in from Rome to interview me for a documentary about lottery winners.
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Viewpoints change when critics gain power
Scandals like those roiling Washington often look more or less nefarious as time and facts unfold. After all, what at first looked like a third-rate burglary turned into Watergate.
I doubt the scandals around Benghazi, the IRS and subpoenas of Associated Press phone records reach Watergate status — but we must await more information and time to know. -
Trouble’s last ride
When announcing my retirement, I made reference to letting “Trouble” having one last ride.
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Going from school to work requires preparation, faith
(Editor’s Note: After graduating from EKU on Saturday, Seth Littrell came to work Monday at the Richmond Register as a reporter/photographer.)
This past Saturday weekend I graduated from Eastern Kentucky University with my bachelor’s in journalism.
It was the single goal I had been working toward for the past four years, and as I walked across that stage I realized I was the first person in my family to do so. -
Report on former EKU Center for the Arts director called 'biased, unfair'
I am writing in response to the Richmond Register’s May 3, 2013, article concerning the former Executive Director of the EKU Center for the Arts. The article I reference appeared on the front page of your newspaper with the headline “Sexual harassment, other offenses alleged in Hoskin’s records in 740 pages of documents.”
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Recognizing those who provide care
How fitting it is that the beginning of National Nursing Home Week is Mother’s Day, May 12.
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