My plane hovered over Fayetteville, Arkansas, preparing for landing. The elderly lady in the seat next to me was gripping the armrest. She had been using aggressive armrest etiquette throughout our flight.

Whenever our plane hit patches of turbulence, she would say sharply, “Son of a…!” And hog the armrest.

“Sorry,” she apologized, in a pronounced Arkansas accent. “I don’t cuss in real life, honey.”

“Isn’t this real life?” I asked.

“No, sugar. This is hell.”

Our plane touched down. It was one of those rough touchdowns when passengers almost applauded. Not necessarily because our plane landed safely, but because none of us passengers underwent a severe gastrointestinal event.

“What brings you to Arkansas?” the woman asked.

“I’m making a speech in Rogers,” I said.

“Well, are you going to visit our Walmart while you’re there?”

She said this in much the same tone you might have asked someone if they were going to visit the Vatican City.

I hadn’t planned on visiting Walmart. But she informed me that this was a mistake. You could not come to Rogers,

she explained, without visiting Walmart.

On July 2, 1962, the first Walmart opened in Rogers. Sam Walton, a 44-year-old opened this store with two goals in mind: Selling American-made products, and offering customer satisfaction.

“No matter what you think of Walmart,” she said, “Sam Walton was a good man. I should know. My husband used to work for him.”

The lady went on to tell a story.

Her husband was a young father, and cashier at a local Walmart. One day, Sam Walton was expected to visit the Walmart. At the time, Walton was the richest person in the United States.

The day was an anxious one for the Walmart’s young staff. Her husband was on the sales floor that day, along with a gaggle of nervous employees, mostly young, who were all trying to make the store look perfect.

The…

At 10 o’clock a.m. on Sunday, I am going to be praying. You will find me on my knees. Praying for them.

Ten o’clock. Because of 10 victims. Ten precious souls. Ten battered children, and probably more.

You might have already heard about it. It happened in the county next to mine. In Bibb County, Alabama. A few days ago, seven adults were arrested for operating a child-sex ring. I am weeping as I write this.

It was an underground bunker. A filthy basement. A bare mattress. At least 10 child victims were tied down, repeatedly abused, and kept imprisoned. And in our state’s own backyard. There are probably more victims.

These are babies. Children between ages 3 and 15 were raped. For roughly $200 per appointment. The kids were drugged. Punished with canine shock collars. They were harmed beyond comprehension. I can’t breathe.

I can’t get them off my mind. Those children of God. Those innocent souls. Those parents. Those shattered families.

I am one man, God. But I’m setting aside Sunday in prayer. I’ve never prayed

for an entire day before. I've never really done anything of note. Heck, I can’t even consistently empty the dishwasher.

But I’m going to pray for those families. And I’m not going to stop after 10 a.m., either. I will pray all day. All week. Always. I don’t know the children’s names, God. But You do. You know them all.

Namely, because You formed them in the womb. You engineered their personalities. You gave them gifts and talents and quirks. And You’re with them now.

But if I’m being honest right now, I don’t understand You, God.

How could You could let this happen? Sometimes, I can’t figure You out. And if I’m being doubly honest, it is hard for me to believe in Your goodness today.

Where is this sacred mercy everyone so often talks about? Where was that mercy when…

She was a youngish mother. Her son was maybe 10. They had the whole playground to themselves. She wheeled his chair along the rubbery mat, and they were playing make-believe.

The woman couldn’t have been more than midthirties. She was dressed in some kind of service uniform. Like she worked at a big-box store of some kind.

She made explosion sounds with her mouth. Good ones, too. Speaking as a former little boy, you learn to appreciate good mouth-explosion sounds.

Their game was fun. The little boy was all in. He was smiling, letting out peals of glee, contributing constant ideas to the imaginary game.

“And here comes the star cruiser!” the boy shouts.

And Mom falls right into her role. Apparently Mom is playing the villian. She lifts him out of his chair, and he says a playful, “Nooooo!”

They are both laughing. Her arms are struggling beneath the weight of his little body. She’s a small woman. Built like a bird. But here she is, hoisting his heavy body to and fro.

She

muscles him up the ladder to the slide.

The playtalk never stops, even though Mom is out of breath. She is still very much playing the role of Darth Vader, or a Klingon, or whatever other space malefactor is en vogue this day in age.

Meantime, the boy is definitely playing the role of the hero of this scenario, I can tell by the timbre of his voice. Like Dudley Do-Right, with a little bit of Mighty Mouse.

They arrive at the top of the platform, and Mom is out of breath. She’s been exerting a lot of energy. But she never misses a beat. She places him between her legs and, soon, they plunge down the slide together. The boy is squealing.

“Can we do that again?” the boy asks.

Mom is shot. I can see her energy reserves waning.

“Heck yes!” she replies.

They cut down the old oak tree today. It was an enormous tree. One of the biggest I’ve ever seen.

I was on my walking route when I heard the chainsaws running. I stood by the curb and watched the young worker crawl up the trunk and take it down from top to bottom.

They scaled it like trapeze artists, swinging from limbs with chainsaws strapped over their shoulders.

There was an old man by the street, with his dog on a leash. He was watching. He was stock still.

“That tree’s been here a long time,” he said. “It was here since my parents were babies.”

“You know this tree?”

He nodded. “My mother grew up beneath that tree. She rocked me to sleep underneath that tree when I was born. We used to live in this house. A long, long time ago.”

“Really?”

Another nod. “Used to sit underneath that tree with my grandparents. They used to visit us all the time. My granddaddy showed me how to polish my own shoes under that tree. Do

kids still polish their shoes?”

“No, sir. I don’t think they do.”

He smiles mournfully. “Well, we used to. My granddaddy was a World-War-I guy, kept his shoes polished to a mirror finish. He’s dead now.”

The old man sighed.

“Granddaddy only came to one of my baseball games in his whole life, because he grew up in Walker County. He was from the country. He grew up hard, he didn’t even know how baseball was played.”

The top of the tree fell. The green wood cracked loudly. And I could not help but feel like the world was losing something important.

The young treemen were attacking the fallen logs with chainsaws as though the logs had insulted their mother.

“A rope swing used to hang on that tree,” said the old man. My mom used to swing on it. My last…

It was a big park. A big city. The man was sitting on the sidewalk. Directly on the ground. And he was barefoot.

His feet were scraped and bloody. He was picking at the sole of his foot. Maybe he was trying to remove a splinter? A shard of glass? His foot was bleeding on the pavement.

He was unshaven. His hair was bleached from sun exposure. His weathered skin bore a rich tan, like someone who has lived outside for the last few presidential administrations.

He was using a tool to pick the offensive object from his sole. A pocketknife maybe. Or a nail file. Perhaps tweezers. I was too far away to see.

The park was crowded with young people. Kids playing volleyball. Soccer. Having picnics. Doing yoga. Jogging in wolfpacks.

Nobody even looked at the man. The students passed him by in hurried steps. They seemed almost afraid of him. And, hey, I get it. College kids. First time living away from home. Here they are, in a public

place, with dad’s credit card in their wallet, while visions of Chipotle danced in their heads.

The last thing these students needed was to get caught up with a panhandler who might ask them for crack money. So they avoided eye contact. To them, the man was furniture. It’s the safe thing to do.

But then I saw a young guy break from the herd of students.

The kid was tall and skinny. He wore a T-shirt with the name of a band on it. A band I don’t recognize because I quit listening to radio somewhere around the time they quit playing Conway Twitty.

The kid sat next to the man on the sidewalk. I couldn’t hear what they were discussing, but I could read the body language. Soon, the kid was inspecting the man’s foot. The kid leaned in to get a better look, his nose…

The angels all got together. The chairman angel banged his gavel on the bench. The community center gymnasium was noisy with angel voices. There must have been billions of them.

“The meeting will come to order!” the chairman shouted. It took a few times to get the angels’ attention. Angels are very social.

Soon, the mass of angels all found their seats. Most had been busy hanging out at the refreshment table, sipping punch and eating angel food cake.

The auditorium fell quiet, save for the slight brushings of wings. Meeting had begun.

The first angel, Ethel, took the stage and gave her presentation. Her presentation wasn’t pretty. It was about how things were going down on earth.

Earth’s outlook was bleak. Ethel had a Powerpoint presentation to prove it. The images on the projection screen showed horrifying things. The angels all winced.

The images showed war, natural disasters, worldwide technological slavery, global drug addiction, and graphic acts of politics.

“It’s not looking good down there, guys,” said Ethel. “Humankind has gotten itself into

a big mess.”

This caused a stir among the angels. For it is a well-known fact that angels are big fans of humans. In fact, many of the saints in attendance at this meeting used to BE humans. Guys like Moses, Peter, and Fred Rogers.

“What are we gonna do?” exclaimed one of the angels. “Earth is such a mess, is there any hope?”

This remark caused another commotion. The angels started murmuring among themselves. Things got pretty loud.

“Order!” cried the chairman, banging his gavel. “I said order!”

One angel stood up. He was sitting a few angels away from Michael Landon. “We need supernatural intervention, and we need it now!”

The angels all shouted in agreement. “Hear,…

There were two men who went fishing. The first man was old. He moved a little slower on account of his arthritis, his bad hip, and his recent hurt knee.

The second man wasn’t even really a “man” at all, technically. He was a boy. The young man was brimming with energy, skipping ahead, swinging his tackle box. He was ready to wipe out vast smatterings of the local fish population.

When the two arrived at the fishing spot, the old man needed rest. The walk had worn him out. His feet were sore. His legs were tired.

The old man sat beneath a shade tree and fell asleep. The young guy, however, could not sit still. He was perturbed that the old man was asleep.

“I did not come out here to nap,” the boy said to himself. “I’m ready to do some freaking fishing.”

Young people said “freaking” back in those days.

So the young guy plodded onward to the pond and began fishing and taking selfies. He was perpetually casting

into the water, reeling it back. Casting, reeling, repeat.

He fished for hours but only caught one tiny fish, not big enough to keep. He threw it back in anger. He kept fishing all day and caught nothing.

Meantime, the old man was fast asleep beneath the tree, snoring and snorting louder than a member of the swine family.

The boy continued to fish all afternoon, perpetually casting, but catching nothing.

Finally, the boy threw down his rod and sat on the shore to pout and play on his phone. He was despondent and angry. When the old man awoke, it was sundown. The sky was pink. The evening air was cool.

“What time is it?” the old man asked.

“Almost nighttime,”…

I arrive at the Opry House a few minutes before rehearsal. My guitar and fiddle cases trip the metal detector, so the security guard makes me open them.

“You ain’t smuggling moonshine, are you?” says the guard with a watchful eye.

“No, Officer. I have no moonshine.”

“Well,” the officer replies. “You want a swig of mine?”

No. I’m only kidding. The guard doesn’t say that. But I wish she would. Namely, because I am a little nervous right now.

This is the Grand Ole Opry. And I’m me.

I do not belong here. When I was in middle-school gym class, wearing a clingy white T-shirt on my chubby body, and shoes with holes in them, some of the boys called me “Little White Trash.” Such things never leave you.

I enter the backstage lobby. Jim Schermerhorn sits behind the check-in desk. He’s the guy who IDs everyone. He has to ask all backstage guests’ for their driver’s licenses, even if this guest is, say, Garth Brooks. Jim still has to say, “Mister Brooks, I’ll need

to see some ID, please.” What a gig.

Jim puts me at ease right away. You can tell he’s just a regular guy. He’s not high and mighty. He cracks jokes.

“We are so honored to have you back at the Opry,” he says to me.

When he shakes my hand, he holds on just a little longer than I do.

They put me in dressing-room Number Two tonight. Which is only fitting. My performances have often been compared to fresh offerings of Number Two.

My room is called the “Bluegrass Room.” Located right next door to Roy Acuff’s old room. Long ago, this would’ve likely been the same mirror where Sarah Cannon transformed herself into a self-effacingly beautiful…

I don’t know if they have radios in heaven. But I hope they do. I hope the angels find one tomorrow night.

I hope they tune this radio to 650 AM WSM, Nashville. I hope they listen to the Grand Ole Opry. Start to finish. I hope my entire ancestry gathers around that little speaker. All my forebears. All my deceased relatives. Even the ones I don’t know.

I hope you’re listening, Granddaddy. After all, you were the family musician. The first musician I ever knew. The multi-instrumentalist who came back from a Second World War with an Italian fiddle in your rucksack.

You were the one who, as a skinny teenager, would sing on the gospel-hour radio shows, back during the Depression, howling into a microphone that looked like a snuff tin. You played piano, guitar, accordion, mandolin. I still have your fiddle.

And, dearest Granddaddy, I hope your mother is gathered around the radio, too. The same great-grandmother I never knew.

The woman with violent red hair, who was a young widow before age 40. Who lived on a desolate tenant farm, with four kids, one of whom had polio. The woman who, at times, worked the land herself until her hands bled.

She struggled to make ends meet by giving piano lessons to every child in that backwater town. She went without eating sometimes, so her children could have supper.

Sometimes I feel her spirit with me. I have felt this presence ever since childhood. I have felt a strong, redheaded musician. And this spirit is feminine. I don’t know how I know this. She’s watching over me. She loves me. I’m never alone.

I also hope my Uncle John is also listening on Saturday night.

Uncle John, the man who wore overalls every day of his adult life. The man who transformed cussing into a sophisticated artform.…

Joe came from a well-off family. They weren’t uber-rich, mind you. But they were comfortable. He grew up going to decent schools. He wore high-end clothes. He may or may not have worn monogrammed underwear.

When he turned 18, he was going to join the military like his dad, the officer, wanted. But there is a well known saying in the military, “You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken excrement.” We are who we are.

Joe just wasn’t the military type. He was creative, he wrote poetry, for crying out loud. So he went to college instead.

Turns out, the poet was a great student. And he realized something important during college: He liked teaching.

So he got a job as a private tutor. It was a fun gig. He taught the children of a good family, and life was shaping up nicely.

Things got even better when he met a girl. She was lovely. Charming. They became obsessed with each other, constantly annoying all those around them with PDA.

It wasn’t long before

they were engaged. Joe was probably happier than he’d ever been. They started planning the wedding.

Only days before the big event, there was an accident. It all happened so fast. His bride-to-be drowned. The accident happened right in front of Joe. His was the last face she saw.

Joe was catatonic. He had PTSD. Night terrors. He couldn’t stop seeing her face. His friends and family didn’t know whether he would ever get over her.

The worst part of it all, he often said, was the loneliness. Loneliness is the worst sensation in the human experience.

He finally left home for a fresh start. He took a job in a rural town with a tiny population. A town so small they the city-limits signs were nailed to the same post.

He lived in the sticks. He joined a church. Mostly, Joe kept to himself.…