Some of you remember the seventies when Alex Haley helped North American blacks get in touch with their African roots?
Forty years later, my wife Mary Lee is helping me get in touch with my Scots-Irish roots.
I'd taken baby steps a couple years ago by reading Senator Jim Webb's Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. Then, a couple months ago after I'd shocked myself by voting for The Donald, Mary Lee cajoled me into reading Richard Davids's The Man Who Moved a Mountain. Finishing that one, she wheedled me into reading J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy (2016).
Remember the Who's "Who Are You?"...
I really want to know...
Who are you? Who, who, who, who?
At sixty-three, I think I'm finally ready to answer.
I'm a Scots-Irish Presbyterian. A hillbilly.
You say I should have written "an" hillbilly?
You a idiot?
If you prefer bourbon to beer or sweet tea, Westminster to Belgic or 1689, Hazard to Escondido or Louisville, Poythress to Horton or Mohler, tups to tulips, libraries to Starbucks, brown to lavender or pink, bagpipes to organ pipes or kazoos, the Th.D. to the D.Min. or Ed.D., sessions to consistories or deacons boards, Janis Joplin to Kathy Keller, haggis to coffee cake or corn bread, and a spleen to a Hart...
Check out Steve Bannon.
You'll like the guy. Trust me.
Tim serves Clearnote Church, Bloomington, Indiana. He and Mary Lee have five children and big lots of grandchildren.
Want to get in touch? Send Tim an email!
