It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Nashville, TN.  We got to visit our son and daughter-in-law, and over lunch, I simply said, “Let’s not go back to the apartment.  It is too nice of a day.  We need to do something outside.”  Robert says, “I know a place,” and off he drove to the Carnton Plantation in Franklin, Tennessee.

As we walked the grounds, we were swept away with the old buildings, some restored, and some collapsing with the weight of weather and time, and we thought about different eras.  We walked into the slave house.  That house was a home with singular rooms for adults and children.  I thought about the contrast of the two of us, living in almost 2,000 square feet, with indoor plumbing, electricity, hi-def TV with 200+ channels, and air conditioning.

Everything was  practical.  The smoke house was to cure the meats to preserve in an age of no refrigeration.  The spring house was built over a creek so that the dried vegetables would stay cool and last longer after harvest.  The home itself had tall ceilings, deep porches, and large windows and doors so that heat of summer could be mitigated, and fireplaces in each of the rooms to shelter from the brace of winter.  The doors from the dining room led to the outdoor kitchen.  The bedrooms had a very significant and forward thinking architectural innovation called closets, and the windows were strategically located to bring in the most light possible.

All this pointed to a different time and a different lifestyle from this day and age, 150+ years since the house was built.  But the upstairs bedrooms, beneath the expensive and opulent wallpaper and oil paintings gave clue to a darker history of the house.  During the Battle of Franklin, the Carnton Plantation house was used as a Confederate Hospital.  And it permanently marred that house.  Those wooden floors are permanently stained from the pools of blood from the surgeries and amputations…the consequences of war.  At one place, you can even see the outline in the stains where the surgeon stood to perform his gruesome duties, and the blood pooled around his feet.

On another part of the property is an ancient, 150 year-old cemetery where thousands of confederate soldiers are buried.  There are state markers indicating the number of men that travelled to Franklin to die.  I had driven to Nashville area from Little Rock, Arkansas in my air-conditioned, cruise-controlled vehicle on an Interstate multi-lane highway.  These young men had walked for weeks and months from Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Virginia, Kentucky, the Carolinas, Florida, and other corners of the South.  There is also a marker that indicates that they had no clue who they were, nor where they were from, and they were place in a large mass grave, remembered only by God, and some distant loved one.

This is not Vicksburg or Shiloh national parks that have cannons and embankments to remind us of the war.  This house shows us -not the “glamor” (at least that is how it is portrayed in movies) of war, but the casualties of the war.  The lives that were lost during that time are tragic.  The scar on our nation is even deeper.

We shake our heads over the feuding in distant lands in the Middle East.  Yet, we have a similar attitude here in America.  There is no trust in the media, no trust in the government, and no trust in our fellow mankind.  Arkansas prisons are filled due to the break down of the family, and no respect for elders, property, authority, and church.  The yelling and the vitriol of politics is amplified as election day draws closer.  I no longer answer my home phone due to all of the campaign and “survey” calls. If you listen to the ads, each candidate is a monster!  And the hate of each party toward the other is growing deeper each day.

This blog post is becoming an “ain’t it awful” post.  But let me help with some resolution.  There is an old hymn, entitled “Count Your Blessings”.  It is a happy tune, designed to counteract the blues of life.  It concludes with the line that states “Count your many blessings see what God has done.”  So as we focus on our blessings, hopefully, it can become the starting point to find a new state.

• We live today and not the 19th century,with all the convenience of the 21st century.
• We have the freedom of speech, religion, and thought – with platforms available to the every-day person.
• We have great health and healthcare systems that keep us from dying from every little germ that comes our way..
• We still have our Savior who is personal and involved in our lives intimately.
• We still have total access to God through prayer.

As I said above, things seem hopeless, but if we will think about our blessings, apply the Golden Rule, and live a life of faith, we have a chance to break the cycle. You can choose how you react to all the bombardment of negativity that blasts us each and every day.  Let’s do not revisit an era of a torn nation ever again.