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Welcome to the new When The Buddha Met Bubba blog.

Redneck Romance

"I like coffee," she says on her first date with Bubba.

"Me too! I love coffee," Bubba asserts.

"I really love going to the movies."

"Me too!" Bubba is getting pretty excited about finding his soul mate.

"I love the ballet," she pats Bubba's hand resting on the cafe table.

"Me too! I love the ballet." Truth is during the first stage of a redneck romance you can get a redneck to say he even loves the ballet.

"What's your favorite?" she says with hope in her voice.

Bubba thinks real hard for a moment. It hurts him. "Swan Pond. I love Swan Pond!"

Six months later...

"Bubba, honey there's a ballet in Birmingham (Alabama's New York City) I'd like us to go see."

"I ain't goin' to no damn ballet. I hate ballet. You can just ballet your butt over to the frig and get me a beer." Bubba scratches his scrotum and thinks to himself, "Hmmm, I wonder where she ever got the idear that I'd go to the ballet?

The Road to Eden's Ridge Review

The Road To Eden's Ridge,southern,women,writers,review

I just finished reading The Road To Eden’s Ridge by two southern women—Linda Weeks and Myra McLarey who write under the pen name M.L. Rose. The main character Lindsey, a twenty-something, intelligent, talented woman is our guide on four journeys: The first: The every man’s/woman’s desire to take a trip down music row. It is a fantasy held in the mind of the young, middle-aged and even a few elders—going on the road playing one night stands in honkytonks and cut and shoot bars, staying up late and composing country songs and living our lives in three quarter time hoping someone will sing along.

The second: The universal desire to discover which road to take to find out who we really are and then head for home. The third-- is the constant return to the cul-de-sac of our past and come to terms with that one love that got away and really finally understand what went wrong. And finally-- the path we all must take at sometime in our life that leads from fierce independence and the inability to trust others with our hearts and explore the unique kind of freedom that can only be attained when we finally let ourselves conquer our history and fears and let someone love us wholeheartedly.

Reading The Road To Eden’s Ridge is like stepping into a well-crafted country song. The writing is lyrical and melodic and filled with the best kind of story-telling—simple, down-to-earth—the kind that has made country music so compelling to listen to even by hard core fans of Schumann’s “Reverie” or Debussy’s “Claire de Lune.” You will see why I made these classical references when you pick this novel up that you can plow through as fast as a well-tended field. (published by Iroquois Press a division of Turner Publishing 2008)

No Color

racism,bigotry,prejudice,animals,dogs,cats

Someone said to me the other day while we were sitting at The Cracker Barrel, waiting to have breakfast, “Do you have any animals on your farm?” We both rocked in the chairs on the front stoop for a minute. “Yep. I do. Three cats and a big dog.”

“What kind of cats?” my neighbor said curiously.

“Just regular cats,” I replied slowly. “I have a hundred and fifty pound Alaskan Malamute. He’s a big’un I reckon.”

“What color are they?”

Someday I hope we semi- enlightened, semi-conscious southerners stop saying right off the bat, “I have this Black friend, or this gay friend or Hispanic friend and not bring up the color, or race until at least the third question in the conversation. After all we never say, “Oh, yeah I have this white friend that I go squirrel hunting with…” Someday we’ll just say “I have this friend…” That will be a good day for all races.

SURRENDER WITH GRACE

surrender,spirituality,grace,relationships,God,journey,spiritual

Are you tired as a one-legged-man in a butt kicking contest? If the answer is yes it might be less about physical exhaustion and more about mental and spiritual fatigue. Down here in the South we know a lot about defeat. The Yankees kicked our butts until we were shoeless, shirtless, ammo-less, horseless and confederate penny-less. We were worn out. We had to quit, give up. But neither northerner nor southerner seems to know much about graceful “Surrender” with dignity and energy still intact. This almost unheard of, unknown kind of surrender allows us to stop struggling against the way things are and go with the flow, stop pushing the river, go with the grain instead of against it. Graceful surrender allows us to retain the energy to fight the spiritual or emotional battles that we pick because we are no longer at war with ourselves or the “way things are” or the way the man upstairs wants them to be for now.

If for example you don’t like the job, home, income, or relationship-you have don’t struggle and fight it-surrender and then focus your increased energy to find detours, solutions, cures, and fixes. Don’t give up, don’t become defeated, don’t struggle; the Grace will come. When the great inventor Thomas Edison could not find the answers to the problems his latest invention presented he would lie down on his couch, put a heavy iron ball in his hand, take a nap and let the idea come to him in a dream. Just as he would drift off the ball would fall and he’d awake and the direction would be given for him to take.