Getting Loose

Hampton

In Houston, we’ve got the Hampton Inn near the Galleria and Reliant Park.  We’ve got  the Hampton older adult living centre at Post Oak.  We’ve even got a short-term nursing facility called the Hampton.

I don’t know.  I just thought it was some quaint name that a lot of folks used thinking it would help to sell their services.  But it wasn’t until I got to our stopping place on the Thames that I discovered what it originally meant. 

The name is connected to King Henry VIII’s favourite court palace, a mammoth structure that completely blew my mind.  I had no idea we were going to end up there.   It was way to the west of London:  way out in the country.

It started off belonging to the Revd. Thomas Wolsey who worked his way up to become King Henry’s chief minister and cardinal to the pope at Rome. 

But when Cardinal Thomas fell from favour, Henry took over the palace and greatly expanded it to accommodate his wiles and whims. 

We got to see the kitchen area, the throne room, the bedroom, and the privy, all sorts of antechambers, the gardens, the inner courtyard, and many more.  And yet, we only saw a fraction of the thousands of rooms.

Walking around, knowing that Henry walked some of the very places that I did, and trying to soak up a little of the history, I could better sense how paranoid rulers might have become.  Their lives could so very easily become a target by some unscrupulous worker within the compound.  I wondered why so far out in the country.  But if a waterway was the best way to get there, wouldn’t that be safer?  Besides it was a great area in which to hunt and throw lavish parties.  A trip from London to the Hampton could take several days with the royal retinue stopping at other royal residences along the way to the Hampton.

The Golden Triangle

A friend of mine, Ted Campbell, a Beaumont boy, asked me what was distinctive about Southeast Texas.  This is some of how I responded:

    Houston claims to represent SE Texas, but as anyone from the Golden Triangle knows, it just ain't so.  The ethos of Southeast Texas truly is much more likely to be found within the confluence of the Trinity, Neches, and Sabine rivers that wind and twist through its very soul.

    At first I wanted to say that what is distinctive is its geography.  But that is not  accurate.  Even though a geologist could map out the convergence of the piney woods with the coastal plain, what is distinctive is much deeper than what can be seen or touched or heard.

    I think that at root and core, what is distinctive is an intangible nexus of the raw bounty this land had to offer in making a fortune—or at least a way of life—from fishing in the waters of the bay or gulf, to the timbers of its mighty forests, to the fertile land yielding a rich bounty of rice, or the drilling for black gold and its many spin-off industries.  Long before derivatives were some arcane financial component to a corporate back page, it was alive and well in Southeast Texas with its magnetic siren call beckoning to those looking for a higher wage, a better standard of living, than could be found from its contiguous geographic cousins.  It was a call that few could resist.

    The promised yield was nearly mesmerizing.  The opportunity for a better life was appealing.  The conjoining of the rich and poor, the black and white, the educated and the uncultivated, provided a rich brew that bequeathed to the residents of Southeast Texas, a malt in which friendships could be forged, in which ideas could be distilled, and in which memories could be sifted endlessly—whether through the turbulence of parsing junior high alliances or the sophisticated pastiche of people bent on improving not just their economic lot, but the very heart of their social fabric as well.

    The environment, the context that engenders southeast Texas is unique to itself, and yet like so many other areas, is a rich loam from which could be fashioned and formed lives that made a difference—contemporaneously, as well as historically.

Being Homeless

I read a fascinating post the other day in The Wall Street Journal.  Look at these factoids:

He doesn’t own a home

He lost interest in acquiring things so

He sold his condo in New York

He sold his mansion in Florida

He sold his only car

He is leaving his fortune to charity

He is leaving his art collection to a museum in Berlin

He says,

"Possessing things is not that interesting."

"Living in a grand environment to show myself and others that I have wealth has zero appeal."

"Whatever I own is temporary, since we’re only here for a short period of time. I don’t get that much enjoyment out of saying ‘I own it.’"

"It’s what we do and produce, it’s our actions, that will last forever."

He is a billionaire. And maybe it is easier for such a one to say that money and things are not that important. But I do know when I’ve really gotten deeper into spiritual practices, I find a lot of what he says to be true.