PICAYUNE —
I recently spoke to a large group of young people, a couple of whom had “Googled” me, they said. I am NOT ready for the 21st Century yet!
At any rate, there were some questions toward the end about my dozen books, seven CDs, my 25 years of writing a weekly syndicated newspaper column, the 1,500+ magazine articles published, and the scores of writing awards and award nominations, all apparently public knowledge if one is properly Googled, although I have never done that to myself yet. One young lady asked, “What’s been the single most fulfilling piece of work that you have done, Uncle Bob?”
Don’t get the wrong idea: I ain’t patting myself on the back, okay? She asked, and I thought for a few moments before answering: “ The last thing I did: The Karo Kantata.” More properly, it’s called the Kairos Cantata.
Betsy and I have worked for two decades as volunteers in the Kairos Prison Ministry International, which has grown during its 30+-year existence to become the world’s largest prison ministry. It’s in 33 states and a dozen foreign countries. Stats over all those years and territories show that if an inmate goes through the Kairos program (a 4-day weekend), then stays faithful to the weekly prayer & share groups it teaches them to form back in the zones, that inmate will have a 75 percent better chance of staying out of prison once he/she has served the sentence and gotten out. Prison Wardens have declared that a collateral value of establishing a Kairos community in a unit (we go back for the 4-day weekend twice a year with different inmates, and have monthly reunions with them) is that sometimes they can actually budget for 40 percent less security therein. Kairos changes lives.
I’ve been fortunate to be able to lead the music for a dozen or so weekends in prison: 50 free-world guys & 60 inmates for 4 days, half of whom don’t get to sing very much in their environment. We usually use guitar accompaniment in prison.
Five and a half years ago, I led three guitar pickers and a harmonicaist (?) to conduct the music on a Kairos weekend. That group jelled into the Mississippi Kairos Music Team, practicing most Tuesday nights in Jackson. We’ve played concerts at many churches, in and out of state, for several national audiences in other states, and on a good many Kairos weekends now. Four years ago, God began giving us a series of original songs, all from the viewpoint of someone in prison, or on a Kairos team — lyrics and words.
We jumped into playing and singing those dozen original songs even though we had at the time been commissioned by KPMI to cut a CD of Praise & Worship songs, and were working on that. It did so well that we were immediately encouraged to cut a CD of the Karo Kantata. So we began to do that.
Ever heard of spiritual warfare? The Enemy rose up against us!
Reece & Stephen came down with prostate cancer & had operations; Rusty had — well, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you; Mikey fell off the roof and broke his leg; Mark had a melanoma cut out of his head; I broke a collarbone, caught a black mold infection, then got a condition that — well, if I told you, I’d have to kill you — laid me up on ice for all one summer just about. Rusty’s Dad died, and his wife’s mother died; Mark’s daddy-in-law died. Mike fell in love.
Most of us gave up on the Kantata; scared to start again! But Rusty came back New Year’s from Nashville, and called us together for practice, saying that he was recommitting himself to completing the Kantata. “God gave it to us, we know that. Are we going to do what He wants us to with it, or keep this spirit of fear?”
We finished it in late July; from the initial feedback, it is everything that God intended when He sent it our way. You can get a copy by going to the website kairos-mississippi.org, or by e-mailing me at karobob1@yahoo.com, or by writing to me at P.O. Box 6, Stoneville, MS 38776. They’re 20 bucks, and it’s a 100 percent Kairos fund-raiser. The Music Team gets nothing, but that’s the fulfilling part!
Opinion
Finishing the ‘Karo Kantata’
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist
Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
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VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists
When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
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Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. -
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered. -
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun
The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral. -
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.
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Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.
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Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist
Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley. - More Opinion Headlines
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