We reached Asheville.  The drive from Greenville, S.C. to Asheville was barely more than an hour.  The dogwoods in the foothills flamed blood red.  The color change is beginning, though I do not think there has been a frost yet. 

Seated in the breakfast room of the Holiday Inn I overhear a conversation between two female senior citizens.  They were twittering about virtual Sunday School lessons.  One speaker referenced a lesson about the “mother of Esther”…  I barely heard one comment that the point of the lesson was “genderless.”  That was all that I could make out of their conversation.

Some things change very slowly, imperceptibly.  The role of church attendance in Southern culture is durable.  The march of science, secularism, and social life increasingly entwined with the internet has not rendered the weekly habit of listening to someone with alleged theological credentials opine on how-one-ought-to-live, — obsolete.  “And so it goes…” as Kurt Vonnegut often said.

I recognize that church in the full range of institutional expression, from a magnificent Catholic cathedral, to the austere straight lines and glass of one of the popular mega-churches, even to a humble store front meeting house in a poor neighborhood, — are about nothing other than metaphysics.  We crave assurance that our sense of how-things-are, holds fast.  That good and evil are, well, black and white.  We need reassurance that our life, is a part of a transcendence that will not let us down after we have played our part, when times passage, decrepitude demands that we leave the stage.  We crave relief from doubt, the suspicion that the wreck of time will not cancel the meaning of our life.  We desire to be told again, that what we have loved, as expressed by our deeds will somehow endure.  And that is what the Minister is paid to do, Sunday after Sunday.

I am no exception.  Otherwise I would never entertain these reflections.

We have two days ahead of us to explore Asheville, North Carolina.  Asheville is known for it’s live music venues.  If we are lucky we will find a blues club tonight where we may relax in the comfort of the music, in company with strangers with whom we are certain to have much in common. 

We anticipate returning to Greenville, South Carolina in the future.  There is much that we liked about the town.  I captured these photos in a Greenville rib joint on Main Street called “Sticky Fingers.”  The BBQ was exceptional.  We patronized the restaurant twice while in town.  The poster of the guitar was on the wall in the men’s restroom.  The Iphone camera is quite handy.

This tune will “get us through.”