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Hello to all of you in this forum. I am Rick Foster age 65. I am chaplain of the Big Spring State Hospital in Big Spring, Tx. I have been in this ministry for 20+years. I was raised in Lubbock . I went to Southcrest Baptist church. Most of my memory was with J.B. Fowler Called to ministry service age 18 in 1966. Degrees from Howard Payne, SWBTS, and Hardin Simmons. I pastored Tuscola, FBC near Abilene 1976-1983.

Hi there Rick,

Glad to see you posting.

Welcome Rick for the token Methodist on the forum!

Welcome a-board, Rick. Glad to have another voice in the mix!

Thanks to all
Rick Foster

Ed,
My name is "Rick Foster" I live and pastor in Knott, Tx. I do remember the name of George Pickle, but did not meet him.

So you're from Knott, Texas. If its "knott" Texas, what state is it?

Maybe it's just Plano Texas.

Welcome, Rick! Look forward to your participation here and getting to know you better.

Rick, glad to have you with us.

If I get a chance I will post some photos os Knott. The church is part of the Crossroads Baptist Association of Big Spring, Tx. This community is in a massive oil boom. We hope to find ways to minister to all these oil men. There are probably 100,000 + new people in the area in the oil and supporting businesses. The area is Midland,Odessa, Andrews, Big Spring, Snyder, SanAngelo, north to Lubbock. We are in the third year of this.

Upon occasion, I check to see who’s saying what and even found out that I was still registered. There seems to be little dialogue these days and what I’ve scanned is eminently predictable vis-à-vis the actors, most preaching to the choir, of course. I bowed out a long time ago…don’t remember exactly when but seems like 2011…after ultra-offending people and when the dear leader and NATO were “liberating/annihilating” Libya. As would be expected of a “doddering old fool,” as once described by a member (or at least something to that effect), I still ramble on in blogs and books, with no claim that either should see the light of day. In late 2011 came forth December in May & Other Stories and in 2012, Hymn Thoughts and Potholes & Other Poems. This year, Time Alone? & Other Poems and Twilight & Other Poems have made the scene. The current subject matter, of course, is highlighted by the on-again, off-again “liberation/annihilation” of Syria, not to mention the “time” ramblings of one quite long-in-the-tooth. Anyone with a huge amount of time to waste is invited to look at the title poems below of the two latter. I will not participate in any further way, so if by the remotest chance someone might be tempted to reply (or bait), fugeddaboutit and just be thankful that Antarctic Sea-Ice volume continued upward setting new records in August while Arctic volume was well above last year’s in August, thus guaranteeing Coney Island’s existence for another week or so and further pooh-poohing MGW. As for the dear leader, God help us all.

Time Alone?

It is a fascinating thing to view,
The young will find it somewhat gruesome, too,
The older ones with curiosity,
The oldest just as fait accompli.
In other words, to watch is not to know,
To know is yet to watch and feel it grow
Into reversals of the normal flow
That makes it too opaque to finely show
The elements comprising final things –
The final things of which the knowing sings.

It is a fascinating thing to gain,
Though some would rather not the thing retain
Nor even yet be introduced to it,
Though either stance engages morbid wit.
It cannot be ignored – too obvious,
Though some might wish it so superfluous,
Its limits do not vary just by time,
At least by time, with that alone its rhyme,
Within its limits lies a life…or not…
Depends on who defines a life…or what.

Twilight

Bright light inexorably diminished,
Warning of a thing soon to be finished
Though by no set parameters enhanced
But variant upon how circumstanced…
In short, to never be one size for all,
Yet quite contrarily casting a pall
On what in changing it not speculate
To lesser be…with dimness not relate.

Its outward cast screams enervation dire,
The loss of that which fullness must require,
Admission, then, that neither by desire
Nor by design can brightness it acquire –
Ah no…inevitable is its theme
As part of Nature…permanent in scheme,
It must ensue as night follows the day –
Indeed, it is their bridge…in Nature’s way.

The loss of brightness, yes…it must accept,
Expect it will less brightness intercept
As dimness multiplies to further fade
Perceptions perhaps wrongly made
When brightness was too paramount to cede
Acceptance of a lesser thing…decreed –
Indeed, as all light fades itself away,
In disappearing, it has had its day.

Glad to know you're still about, or at least extant, Jim. I am hoping to get someone to do a fasola-shapenote adaptation (arrangement) of the tune you gave me for the Noyes fir-tree carol; if I succeed, it will be published in 2015 in a tunebook to be entitled Sankta Harmonio.