Photo taken by J. Scott Fortson

I have spent a good portion of my life
asking God to speak.

Sometimes in the middle of trouble.
Sometimes when everything was going just fine.
And sometimes at three in the morning,
when the house was quiet
and I couldn’t explain why I was awake.

I used to think hearing God
would be a little more obvious.

A voice from heaven.
A burning bush.
Something that would leave no room
for misunderstanding.

But I’ve lived long enough to wonder
how much I’ve missed
because I was waiting for something louder.

Elijah knew something about that.

He stood on a mountain
while the wind tore through the rocks.
Then came an earthquake.
Then fire.

And God was not in those things.

Afterward came a gentle whisper.

I’ve thought about that passage many times.

Maybe the trouble isn’t that God has stopped speaking.

Maybe we’ve forgotten how to be quiet.

We fill every empty space with something.
The television.
The telephone.
The news.
Somebody else’s trouble.
Somebody else’s opinion.

Lord knows we’ve got plenty of those.

And when a difficult decision comes along,
we start asking everybody what they think.

Friends. Family. Coworkers.
People who love us.
People who barely know us.

Sometimes we aren’t looking for wisdom.
We’re looking for somebody to agree with us.

There’s nothing wrong with good counsel.
Scripture encourages it.

But there comes a point
when twenty opinions are just twenty more voices
standing between us and the decision
we’re afraid to make.

I’ve been guilty of that myself.

And prayer?

I wonder how often I’ve treated prayer
like a conversation where I do all the talking.

I bring my worries.
My plans.
My requests.
My preferred outcomes.

I tell God what I need,
how I think it ought to happen,
and occasionally when I’d like it done.

Then I say amen
and go about my business.

Samuel had a better idea.

Speak, Lord.
Your servant is listening.

Not explaining.
Not negotiating.
Not trying to get the last word.

Listening.

Sometimes the silence stays silent.

Sometimes you wait longer than you wanted.
Sometimes the answer is no.
And sometimes you discover
that the thing you were asking for
wasn’t what you needed after all.

But there’s something about sitting still
without demanding anything
that changes a person.

And then there are those little nudges.

Those are the ones that get me.

A name comes to mind
while you’re driving down the road.

An old friend you haven’t spoken to in years.

Somebody you ought to check on.

A family member you need to forgive.
A person you should thank
while they’re still here to hear it.

You think about calling.

Then you don’t.

You get busy.
You tell yourself you’ll do it tomorrow.
You wonder if it would be awkward.

And eventually the thought passes.

I’ve done that more times than I care to admit.

Not every passing thought
is a message from heaven.

Sometimes a thought is just a thought.

That’s why we have Scripture.
That’s why we need wisdom.

But when a thought leads you toward kindness,
what exactly are you waiting for?

Call them.

Send the message.

Make the visit.

Tell somebody you love them.

You may never know
why they crossed your mind that morning.

You may never know
what was happening on the other end
of that telephone.

And that’s all right.

Not everything good needs
a supernatural explanation.

Sometimes loving your neighbor
is simply loving your neighbor.

And perhaps that’s part of what
we’ve made too complicated.

We want God to reveal the next ten years
when we haven’t been faithful
with the next ten minutes.

We ask for direction
while ignoring the person
standing right in front of us.

We pray for opportunities to serve
and then complain when somebody needs our time.

I know that man.

I’ve been him.

More than once.

But I’m learning.

Slowly.

That stillness matters.
That wisdom doesn’t always come from a crowd.
That prayer requires more than words.
And that faith eventually has to get up
and do something.

Above all, I’m learning
that the more familiar I become
with the life and words of Jesus,
the less mysterious some decisions become.

He already told us to love.
To forgive.
To show mercy.
To care for the lonely.
To visit the sick.
To make peace where we can.

We don’t need another sign
to begin doing those things.

I imagine I’ll spend the rest of my life
trying to recognize the voice of God.

I’ve spent this much of it learning to listen.

But I hope I spend less of it
waiting for thunder.

And more of it paying attention
to the still small things.

The person.
The moment.
The kindness left undone.

Because one day
the telephone won’t be answered.

The chair will be empty.

And the words we meant to say
will have nowhere left to go.

So call the friend.

Tell your people you love them.

Sit quietly with the Lord.

And when the opportunity comes
to do something good,

don’t make it harder than it is.

The world has enough noise.

And I have made my share of it.

Maybe the next time God whispers,
I’ll be quiet enough to listen.

And when somebody’s name
comes wandering through my mind,

I’ll pick up the telephone.

Boutwell Jones
Red Clay Gospel

Before they called him Killer,
before the world knew Weybo,
he was simply her little boy.

Her firstborn.
Her beginning.
A thousand prayers she had yet to pray.

And there sat Nina,
young enough to believe
she could hold him forever.

The years would have other plans.

But somewhere beyond the reach of time,
in a flowered chair,
a mother still holds her son.

And nothing has changed.

Boutwell Jones

redclaygospel.com

Before I knew there was a road,
people had already been walking it.

O’Neal had lived a life
before Sue.

There were daughters before my mother.
A marriage before the marriage.
Stories already in motion
before anybody knew my name.

Then came the twins.

Kathy and Neal.

My grandparents stood in the yard,
each holding a child,
as if they had any idea
where any of this was going.

Years later,
my mother held me much the same way.

Six months old.

No plans.
No résumé.
No idea about Georgia,
or Athens,
or Christy,
or children of my own.

Certainly no idea
that one day I would sit with these photographs
and wonder how all those lives
somehow became mine.

We like to call things fate
once we know how they turned out.

It makes the road look straighter
than it ever was.

But old photographs tell the truth.

Nobody in them knows what comes next.

The marriages.
The losses.
The children.
The mistakes.
The mercy.

They know only the piece of road
beneath their feet.

Steinbeck wrote about an old Hebrew word:

Timshel.

Thou mayest.

Not thou shalt.

Not it has already been written.

Mayest.

Maybe that is the strange gift
God has given us.

We inherit a road
without inheriting a destination.

Blood gives us a beginning.

Place gives us a beginning.

Our fathers and mothers give us more
than we will ever fully understand.

Some of it blessing.

Some of it burden.

Most of it both.

But sooner or later,
they put us down.

And we walk.

We may repeat what came before us.

We may redeem it.

We may wander for twenty years
only to discover
we have been carrying our grandfather’s hands
and our mother’s eyes
the whole way.

Perhaps fate is not a destination at all.

Perhaps it is simply the place
where choice begins.

Thou mayest go.

Thou mayest stay.

Thou mayest become
what everyone expected.

Thou mayest become something else.

The way is open.

And somewhere behind us
are people standing in old photographs,

holding babies,

with absolutely no idea

what they have begun.

Boutwell Jones

redclagospel.com

Photo left to right: Kfran, me, and Aunt Gail

Easter

Risen Lord

Living God

Time to wear your Sunday best

I can still smell the blackberry winter winds and buffet spread only Sue could lead and O’Neal facilitate

Royalty renewed

Smile for the photo and understand the pains and trials we were facing had faded into Christ’s suffering and redemption

For we were born before the shadows and winds had a name and seasons formed to explain the misty after math of God’s miraculous creation

Stardust
Golden

Boutwell Jones
Redclaygospel.com

Photo: Catherine Griffin Neyhart

We met on dirt and clay and mud and concrete. Earthly setting, Northeast Florida. That portion of the state no one wants to claim. Floridians say it is the largest town in south Georgia and Georgians consider it buffer land that helped them against the spanish and french.

But God meant us to meet. In the cosmos.

He and his brothers and sister had lost their father. He was in 7th grade. The same year Aunt Peggy grabbed me out of school when O’Neal passed on.

So we met in the cosmos or for you earnest southern baptists or staunch catholic types, the spiritual. Two souls.

He is a father now. Married, thriving, producing elite because he is elite. Good stock, gold blood, spiritual fabric trained the right way.

I never told him this while we were actively swimming life. I waited for the right time. But we will have eternity to catch up and share familiar stories of want and need and longing.

Stories only a broken soul that has endured loss and isolation can understand. The platinum wound. The driving catalyst of pain.

I can hear the sweet voices singing the old spiritual by Uncle Lewis Edgar Jones. There is power. There is power in the blood. There is power in the precious blood. Power, power, wonder working power in the precious blood of the lamb.

Many thanks to Catherine Griffin Neyhart for capturing the pic. She grabbed thousands and I mean thousands of great moments for my family from 2013 to 2016. This moment of the crazy coach whispering in the ear has received one glaring question. What did you whisper? And I simply recited the words of the song I was listening to in my ear pods. That’s how easy it was to coach this young man and his teammates.

Boutwell Jones

redclaygospel.com

Down in Southwest Georgia
there is a creek with a name
a boy has to grow into.

Chickasawhatchee.

It does not hurry.
It slides through the Basin,
past cypress knees and pine timber,
and somehow always finds the Flint.

Brett comes from that country.

Brett Eubanks Rooks.
Ms. Nina’s baby boy.

I suspect he knew those woods
and that water
the way some men know scripture.

By heart.
Without trying.

I did not grow up on its banks.

I grew up beside Brett.

Preschool.
Kindergarten.
Then every field and court
the county had.

We knew each other
before we knew much of anything else.

Before driver’s licenses.
Before girls.
Before anybody expected us
to become responsible men.

We played ball together.

Won some.
Lost some.

Learned how to get knocked down
and how to get back up
without making a speech about it.

Some seasons, we worked at Eubanks and Son.

Brett’s grandparents’ place.
Ralph and Mama Crit.

Brett’s middle name
was on the business.

Kale and lettuce
when the weather turned cool.

Cantaloupe and watermelon
when it most certainly did not.

Bent over the rows at daybreak,
heat coming off the ground
before the sun was all the way up,
red clay to the shins.

Nobody complains much
when your best friend is two rows over
complaining for you.

At the end of it,
Ralph and Mama Crit
paid us in cash.

I have been paid a good many ways since.

None of it ever felt
quite like that.

We learned about girls
the way boys learn most things.

Badly.
Together.
Mostly from each other.

Which explains a great deal.

When something went right,
he was the first one I told.

When something went wrong,
he was the one who did not need telling.

And we had the kind of friendship
that did not require talking.

A tailgate at the edge of a field.
Two boys.
A whole evening could pass
with nothing said
and nothing missing.

Then Athens.

The University of Georgia.

Roommates.

Apparently, all those years
had not been nearly enough.

Brett had Christa and Wey,
and in time all three Rooks children
found their way between the hedges.

Somewhere along the way,
our childhood became adulthood.

Then I met a girl.

And I did what a young man does
when the ground moves under him.

I went and found Brett.

He listened to all of it.
Every doubt.
Every circle I drove myself in.

Then he leaned back and said,

“Choose brunette.”

That was the whole sermon.

There may have been a blonde.
History is quiet on the matter.

He was right.
He has been right
for more than thirty years.

So when Christy and I stood up
to begin our life,
Brett stood with us.

Of course he did.

He had helped write the first line.

There are people who know
the man you have become.

And there are a precious few
who remember the boy
you used to be.

Brett knows both.

He remembers a version of me
my children never met.

And I remember his.

We have lived long enough now
to learn that time
does not treat everybody the same.

Some people leave.
Some are taken.
Some simply drift.

And some stay.

Not because life holds still.

Because the friendship
was never built on convenience
in the first place.

I think about that old creek.

How it bends through the timber,
goes dark in the swamp for a while,
and keeps moving
whether anybody is watching or not.

It does not need a straight line
to know where it belongs.

Neither do we.

Brett and I have traveled
a good many miles
from those first school days.

But somewhere in the Basin,
the Chickasawhatchee
is still running.

And somewhere beneath
all these years,

two little boys
are still walking toward a classroom.

They know nothing yet
about melon fields or Athens,
about brunettes,
weddings,
children,
or all the things
life will ask of them.

They only know
they have found a friend.

And half a century later,

that is still enough.

Boutwell Jones

She came wearing midnight
with Georgia clay around her eyes,
two little flowers in her hair
like spring had found a place to hide.

Black as the river after sundown.
Brown as the road back home.

She has never seen the Flint
or walked the red dirt roads,

but some things know their country
without ever seeing a map.

Four paws.
Two bows.
A heart bigger than the dog.

And somewhere beneath this Texas sky
an old Georgia road runs east,

while she sits among us
wearing flowers in her hair

like she remembers.

Sweet little Georgia Rose.

Boutwell Jones

Georgia Rose

She came wearing midnight
with Georgia clay around her eyes,
two little flowers in her hair
like somebody told the spring
where to hide.

Black as the river after sundown.
Brown as the road back home.

Sweet little Georgia Rose.

She never saw the Flint River,
never walked the fields
where her name came from.

Doesn’t matter.

Some things know their country
without ever seeing a map.

She carries Georgia with her.

In the color of her feet.
In those stubborn little eyes.
In the way she finds the warmest place
in every room
and somehow convinces everybody
it belonged to her first.

There are roses that grow
beside old houses.

Roses climbing fences.

Roses somebody planted
so long ago
nobody remembers whose hands
put them in the ground.

Then there is this one.

Four paws.

Two bows.

A heart considerably larger
than the animal carrying it.

She waits beneath the table
while the people she loves
go about the serious business
of believing we are in charge.

Maybe that is the joke.

Maybe God knew
a house full of grown people
needed something small enough
to remind us.

Come home.

Sit down.

Stay awhile.

Love whoever walked through the door.

The world will still be complicated
when you get back to it.

Outside, Texas keeps stretching west.

But somewhere beneath all that sky
an old Georgia road keeps running east,

past longleaf and red dirt,
past Albany,
past a river still carrying flint
toward the Gulf.

And here she is,

hundreds of miles away,

wearing flowers in her hair
like she remembers.

Sweet little Georgia Rose.

Boutwell Jones
The Basin Collection

Photo: Catherine Griffin Neyhart

When I coached basketball in Atlanta, I had the privilege to be connected with Better Basketball. Rick Torbett and his team helped me refine and hone coaching techniques. Through that connection, I was exposed to the read and react offense. 26 rules or tenants, and I found if a high school team could learn 10 of the 26 principles they would be competitive and if they learned 15 or more principles they could over achieve.

I loved teaching it because it also helped in life……

The Read and React basketball offense consists of several key rules and guidelines that help players make decisions based on the defense’s actions. Here are 26 essential rules:

1. Pass and Cut: After passing, the player must cut to the basket. When life becomes stale, helping others can create an amazing boomerang of good will.

2. Post Pass and Cut: When passing to the low post, the passer cuts to the basket. Life is infinitely more fun when you attack it and can be even more fun when you have a solid group of humans that attack it with you.

3. Dribble At Back Cuts: A dribble at triggers a backdoor cut from teammates. When you walk the road of life, don’t be afraid to smile at others and wish them well. The look or kind word could be the catalyst that triggers their victory.

4. Circle Movement on Dribble Penetration: Perimeter players move toward the direction of the drive. Momentum in life is a real thing. ride the waves and prepare your lungs for the crash, but ultimate breathe in a steady rate and enjoy the ride!

5. Read the Defense: Players must constantly assess the defense’s positioning. We are at war. We have an enemy. Keep your friends close and enemies closer to the point you know the flavor of chewing gum they crave. Every movement in this world has to be strategic.

6. Spacing: Maintain proper spacing to create driving lanes and passing options. Give yourself alone time. Intentionally. Give others that same courtesy. The longing for more will help you cull the herd and tighten your circle.

7. Ball Movement: The ball should move quickly to find open players. When you find yourself in the zone of life, you quickly find that time passes quickly and you better take advantage of every moment and make the myths that last.

8. Cut Hard: All cuts should be executed with intensity to create separation. Work hard, play hard, pray mightily and rest while hydrating. It’s a marathon with know real time keeper.

9. Use Screens: Set and use screens effectively to create scoring opportunities. The best things in life are free, The best wins are those where you gave away something to allow others to shine. Leaders lift others and MVPs understand that helping the team creates maximum joy.

10. Read the Help Defense: Players should recognize when help defense is coming and react accordingly. Sometimes enemies become friends. Those new friends often are loyal and more valuable because they had a reason or catalyst to switch and that catalyst might have been you,

11. Skip Passes: Utilize skip passes to exploit defensive rotations. Life played like checkers can create joyful moments but chess is a longer play.

12. V-Cuts: Use V-cuts to create separation from defenders before receiving the ball. Life is a beautiful dance and each of us are a unique artist.

13. Ball Reversal: Reverse the ball to shift the defense and create openings. Prayer is critical. Prayer can change hearts and move situations. When you realize praying is powerful and character building and not delivering your order at the counter, the more you will pray for God’s will and not your own.

14. Post Play: Utilize post players effectively, allowing them to read the defense. In life the closer you get to the win, the more location and proximity to the problem solves the riddle.

15. Drive and Kick: Drive to the basket and kick out to open shooters. Sometimes you can appear selfish as a fake or misdirection of serving and contributing. It’s how knowledge becomes street wisdom.

16. No Set Plays: Focus on reading and reacting rather than running set plays. Life is a beautiful improv.

17. Communication: Players must communicate constantly on the court. All we have to do is make sure we keep talking.

18. Defensive Recognition: Identify whether the defense is man-to-man or zone. Adulting sucks. You better have a game plan and that game plan needs to be flexible to deal with life’s chaos.

19. Attack the Gaps: Look for gaps in the defense to penetrate. Seems like attacking the day is a principle to cherish.

20. Cut to Open Space: Move to areas where the defense is weak or absent. The more space you create in life, the more impactful you can be. Eat dinner a lone every now and then. Use the space to pray or read the room. Be mindful of those that appear lonely. Pray for them and listen to the promptings of the holy spirit.

21. Be Unpredictable: Vary cuts and movements to keep the defense guessing. Being unpredictable allows for opportunities to encounter diverse talent, creative minds, and healthy challenge.

22. Utilize the Shot Clock: Be aware of the shot clock and manage time effectively. In life, we have no clue of our quality time left balance. Buy the concert ticket, take the trip, call that loved one, send the text, live free…..

23. Read the Ball: Players should read the ball’s position and react accordingly. Life has a few foundational principles. The sooner you can learn what those are, the faster you can get to bending those rules to create a beautiful symphony.

24. Transition Offense: Quickly transition into the Read and React offense after gaining possession. Life is full of turnovers. Winning the turnover battle of life and making lemonade out of lemons can be a differentiator but proactively creating an environment that allows for the pivot is crucial.

25. Practice Drills: Regularly practice drills that reinforce these principles. Each day we are called to die to self, challenge the flesh, and train to go to battle for those we love. If you have lack of self respect, this will be intolerable.

26. Adaptability: Be willing to adapt strategies based on the opponent’s defensive schemes. Adapt or die.

No team I ever coached or was a part of got all of these down to perfection. I’ve seen a few pro teams that came close. What made the ultimate difference was making this the fabric of the daily. Constant repetition. Perfect practice.

Time flies by whether you train and remain disciplined. You will be amazed at the results.

Boutwell Jones

redclaygospel.com

I cannot tell you that nothing is ever lost.
I can tell you what I have seen.

Things go quiet.
They do not go away.

Like a bell after the last stroke,
still humming in the iron.

Like a prayer God kept hearing
long after we stopped saying it.

So let the night keep what it keeps.

Everything we have loved
is still moving toward morning.

Boutwell Jones

Before Albany had a name,
before the courthouse,
before the highway,
before anybody drew a county line
through the red earth,
the river was already moving.

Thronateeska.

The place where the flint was picked up.

People came down through the longleaf
and knelt beside the water.

They reached beneath the current
and brought stone into the light.

Stone for cutting.
Stone for hunting.
Stone for fire.

Maybe that is where the story begins.

Not with the man.

Not even with the river.

With something buried
waiting to be lifted.

The Flint does not hurry.

It bends.

It disappears behind cypress
and comes back around.

It floods fields.
It falls again.

It carries Georgia clay southward
without asking anybody
where Georgia ends.

Creeks find it.
Rain finds it.
Things lost upstream
sometimes find it too.

And somewhere near Albany,
the Kinchafoonee and Muckalee
come wandering toward the same country
as if water remembers
where it belongs.



I spent half a lifetime
trying to get somewhere.

Turns out,
the river had been teaching
something different.

Go around what will not move.
Carry what you must.
Leave the rest on the bank.

There are things
you cannot understand
until you come home.

I was a boy once
in that country.

Red dirt on my shoes.
Gnats around my face.
Heat rising off fields
like the earth itself was breathing.

A grain bin beside a chicken house.

A cinder block.

A storm rolling across Southwest Georgia
with no concern whatsoever
for what I believed about God.

Then light.

Enough light
to make darkness impossible
for a little while.

I did not know the word
Thronateeska.

I did not know
people had been lifting stone
from that ground
for thousands of years.

I only knew
something had reached down
and lifted me,
the way you lift a child
asleep in the back of a truck
and carry him inside
without waking him.



Fire.
Water.
Stone.
Clay.

Maybe the old country
has always preached
with whatever it had.

A thunderstorm.
A river.
A live oak.
A grandmother standing in a kitchen.
A grandfather’s hands.
My father getting older.
Then me.
Children leaving home.
The sound of somebody
you love
coming back through the door.

We kept waiting for the burning bush.

Meanwhile,
the whole Basin was on fire.



Thronateeska.

Say it slowly.

An old name
beneath a newer one.

That happens to people too.

We collect names.

Son.
Husband.
Father.
Coach.

To boys who are grown men now.

Writer.
Old man,
if God gives us enough mornings.

But underneath them
there is something older.

The name God called me
before my mother
ever said mine out loud.

Maybe growing older
is not becoming someone else.

Maybe it is digging through
everything that accumulated
until you find
what was there
in the beginning.



The river keeps going.

Past Albany.
Past Newton.
Past fields where people
were born,
worked,
prayed,
fought,
forgave,
and were buried.

South toward Florida.
South toward another river.
South toward the sea.

It takes the Basin with it
one grain at a time.

But tonight,
somewhere beneath that water,
there is still flint.

Waiting.

And somewhere on the bank
a boy is standing
beneath a Georgia sky
believing the whole world
has only just begun.

He does not know
how far he will wander.

He does not know
how much he will lose.

He does not know
how many times
he will have to find his way back.

Let him wander.

The river knows.

The river has always known.

One day
he will come back
and kneel beside the water.

He will reach beneath the current
and close his hand around something ancient,

and he will notice

it is his grandfather’s hand now.

Then he will understand
what the people before him knew.

Some things are not found.

They are remembered.

Lift the stone.
Carry the fire.
Follow the river home.

Boutwell Jones
Red Clay Gospe

l

Aunt Donna and Uncle Joey, this was homecoming Robert F. Munroe and they had both lost their father, James Lovic Jones, so Joey stepped in to escort her to midfield.

For Joey

Miracle child of James Lovic and Merle,
you came like mercy through the Jones line.
You lost your father young, but never his gaze.
One Friday night, breaking records, you said it plain:
“I saw my dad in the stands watching me.”

That tells us who you are.
A fighter. A son. A broken man who loved Jesus hard.
And now, through this valley, you are still being watched in love,
still being held by the Father who never leaves.

- Boutwell Jones

The Jones crew right before Brian and Barry would be born…..

There are some men who enter this world like noise,
and some who arrive like mercy.

Joey was a mercy.

The miracle child.
The fourth child of James Lovic and Merle,
the oldest of the five younger Jones kids,
a living reminder that God still had more to give this family.
More strength. More story. More heart.
More proof that grace still visits bloodlines
that know both joy and sorrow.

From early on, there was something about him.
He had the kind of presence folks noticed.
Good-looking, gifted, street smart, quiet when he wanted to be,
but never forgettable.
He was a tremendous athlete,
the kind of young man who could take over a football game
and leave records broken and jaws hanging.
His senior season was the kind boys dream about,
the kind small towns remember.

But what made Joey special was not just what he could do.
It was what he carried.

He lost his daddy, James Lovic,
when he was still just a young teenager.
That kind of loss does something to a boy.
It grows him up too fast.
It puts weight on his shoulders before the world thinks he is ready.
It leaves an ache no trophy can fix
and no applause can quite drown out.

And yet somehow, by the mercy of God,
that ache became part of his fire.

One night during that unforgettable senior season,
after he had broken several records and played out of his mind,
someone asked him what had possessed him.
Joey gave the kind of answer nobody forgets:

“I saw my dad in the stands watching me.”

There it is.
Not just a quote.
A window into the soul of the man.

A son still reaching for his father.
A young man carrying grief like fuel.
A heart playing not only for the crowd below,
but for the love that shaped him and the absence that sharpened him.
Maybe that was Joey’s gift all along.
He knew how to carry both strength and sorrow in the same body.

That is holy territory.

Because life never made Joey into a cardboard saint.
He knew brokenness too.
He knew how hard life can hit.
He knew what it meant to be wounded and still keep moving.
And maybe that is part of what made his faith so real.

He loved Jesus with all his heart.
Not in some polished, plastic way.
Not as a man pretending to have no scars.
But as a broken man reaching for a perfect Savior.
As a man who wanted his life to be worthy of the One who saved him.
That kind of faith is not cheap.
It is forged.
It is prayed through.
It is cried through.
It is lived.

Joey became more than an athlete.
He became a gifted businessman,
sharp and talented in ways the classroom alone cannot explain.
He had instinct. Wisdom. Grit.
The kind of intelligence that sees around corners.
The kind of presence that fills a room without begging for attention.
Larger than life, but still deeply human.
Quiet at times, but never empty.
Just deep water.

And now this hard diagnosis has come.
Six months to a year, they say,
as if a human life can be folded into a neat timeline
and handed back to a family that loves him.

But Joey is not a timeline.
He is not a diagnosis.
He is a husband to Donna Sue.
A father to Zack and Zoee.
A grandfather whose love will keep walking around in the hearts of his grandkids.
A son of James Lovic and Merle.
A brother. A Jones.
A man of talent, grit, memory, humor, scars, faith, and heart.

And this is what I believe with everything in me:

The same boy who once looked into the stands and saw his father
is now held by the Father who never leaves.

The same Joey who carried grief onto the field
does not have to carry this valley by himself.
Jesus Christ has gone ahead of him.
Into weakness. Into fear. Into suffering. Into death itself.
And because of that, this family can grieve honestly
without surrendering hope.

Donna Sue, Zack, Zoee, the grandkids, all who love him,
you are not being asked to pretend this is easy.
It isn’t.
This is painful and unfair and holy all at once,
the strange country grief always drags us into.

So tell the stories now.
Tell them while Joey can hear them and smile at them.
Tell about the records and the laughter and the grit.
Tell about the quiet strength.
Tell about the business mind and the street smarts.
Tell about the faith that kept reaching for Jesus.
And tell that story, again and again,
about the night he said he saw his daddy in the stands.

Because that is not just about football.

That is about love surviving loss.
That is about grief becoming fire.
That is about a son believing he was seen.
And maybe that is the comfort now, too:
Joey is still seen.

Seen by the family who loves him.
Seen by the children and grandchildren carrying his imprint.
Seen by the memory of James Lovic.
Seen by the mercy of God.
Seen by Jesus, who has never once confused a broken life with a wasted one.

So let Joey be comforted.
Let this family be comforted.
Not with shallow words,
but with the deep gospel truth that love is stronger than the grave
because Christ is.

The miracle child.
The athlete.
The businessman.
The quiet force.
The broken man who loved Jesus.
The son who saw his father in the stands.
The husband, the father, the grandfather.
A larger-than-life character, yes,
but even more, a beloved man whose story matters.

And when the final chapter comes, whether sooner or later than anyone wants,
it will not mean the crowd is gone.

It will mean the stands are full.

- Boutwell Jones

Photo taken by Adam Jones.

I put my arms around two younger men
just outside a conference room
early on a Wednesday morning,
before the day got started.

Chris and Philip.

Good men.
Young enough to be my sons.
Fathers now themselves.
I know what kind of fathers,
because I have met their boys.

Chris once handed me the phone
so his son Michael could tell me
about the Home Depot trip with his dad.
Michael had already given me pointers
on coloring and art projects,
so I knew I was talking to a professional.
He walked me through the whole thing.
The lumber.
The paint.
The order you do things in.
I have heard famous speakers.
I have sat under preachers
who could shake the rafters.
None of them ever explained the work of a man's hands
the way that boy did.
He had the voice of an archangel.
I had heard enough of his father
to know he came by it honestly.
Every other sentence was about his dad.
Then he told me the secret to all of it.

"You believe in what you are doing,
like when I was an angel in the parade."

So when Chris and Philip asked me the question
I used to ask older men
and mostly did not like the answers to,
I owed them the truth.
What do you wish somebody had told you?

For a long time I thought being a father
meant knowing what to do.

Provide.
Protect.
Correct.

Keep everybody close enough to the guardrails
and pray nobody drove through one.
I was wrong about most of it.
Not all of it.
Most of it.

Here is what the years taught me
that no book ever did.

One.

Every morning,
slay the hunk of flesh staring back at you in the mirror.
Do it quickly.
Before he starts believing
the whole day is about him.
I know that fellow.
He has my face.
He has raised his voice at a nine-year-old
over a spilled glass of milk.
He has sat in the truck in the driveway
ten extra minutes
because he did not want to walk inside and be needed.
He has wanted his children to turn out well
mostly so people would say he did.

Jesus said deny yourself daily.
Paul said put the flesh to death.

Daily is the word that humbles me.
Because he gets back up.
Every single morning,
he gets back up.

Two.

Then get dressed for a fight
you cannot see.
Not against your wife.
Not against your children.
That distinction took me years.
Paul called it armor.
Truth.
Righteousness.
Faith.
The Word.
And prayer through all of it.
I call it knowing your limits.
There are things a father cannot fix
with a louder voice,
a bigger check,
or a better argument.
I learned that our first nights in Florida,
after we moved the family down from Atlanta.
Every night I tried to fix everybody's hurting.
Every night I ran out of fixes.
In the end it was not me.
It was time.
It was new friends at school.
It was neighbors on our street
I had not even met yet.
God used strangers
to finish what my love could not.
Some nights the only honest thing left
is the floor,
and your knees on it.

Three.

Love the woman God gave you.
Not only the girl you married.
Christy and I dated sixteen months
and have been married more than thirty years.
I have been married to at least four women since then,
and every one of them was her.
Bodies change.
Dreams change.
Certainties you would have bled for
quietly leave the house one day
and do not come back.
There were seasons neither of us recognized
the two kids standing at the altar.
Seasons I was not easy to love.
She loved me anyway.
Some seasons I had to decide to.
So fall in love with something deeper than the photograph.

Her soul.

Learn it.
Guard it.
Keep choosing it.
Your children are watching.
They will forget most of what you told them.
They will not forget how you treated their mother
on the days she was tired
and you were wrong.
I know.
One night I had to tell my grown son
I was sorry
for the way I had acted around his mother.
No excuses.
I had been an absolute jerk.
Then I called my daughter
and let her help carry her father.
Brutal.
It may be the truest thing I ever taught them.

Four.

The children were never yours.
They were on loan.
The Psalmist calls them a heritage.
A gift.
Not a possession.
You get a handful of years.
Bandaged knees.
Aluminum bleachers at volleyball games.
Waiting up past midnight.
Advice nobody asked for.
Prayers whispered in the doorways of sleeping rooms.
And then you start handing over keys.
The old 4Runner, the first time he drives alone.
A Honda Accord, the day he graduates.
The title to the Highlander, the day he gets married.
Three sets of keys.
Each one lighter in my hand
and heavier in my chest.

And the girl I watched from those bleachers
moves to Austin
and spends her days helping other people's children
do what the rest of us never think twice about.
Grip a fork.
Take a step.
Find a smile.
Find a word.
It does not feel like losing them.
It feels like being handed the answer to every prayer
and finding out the answer
has a forwarding address.
They were not made to be smaller copies of you.
They were made to carry their own light
into rooms you will never see.
Parenting becomes the holy work
of opening your hands.

Five.

Then the hardest one.
Let go of the wheel.
I have not mastered this.
I still reach for it.
Most nights I lie awake running scenarios,
a man doing underwriting on his own children.
So I pray instead.
Humbly.
Specifically.
Protect them.
Give them courage.
Put good people in their path.
Correct them when they wander.
Hold them when the world wounds them.
Remind them who they are
when the world tries to rename them.
Make them salt.
Make them light.
That is where fatherhood leaves you.
Not in the driver's seat.
Not standing over grown children with instructions.

Somewhere behind them.
Older.
Hands open.
Praying to the God who loved them
before you ever knew their names.
That is what I told Chris and Philip.
Or tried to.

Truth is, their boys had already preached it better.

Not long ago I ran into young Philip
holding an Allosaurus
the way some men hold a Bible.
I asked him about it.
That was all it took.
He told me how long they lived.
How big they grew.
How the earth was old and wide and full of them
long before any of us showed up.

I stood there listening
and found myself thinking through my entire existence.
How small I am.
How brief.
How long God has been at work
before I ever arrived to help.
Maybe that is the whole lesson.
We spend the first half of fatherhood
learning how to hold on,
and the second half
learning how to let go.

And the whole time
we are somebody's son,
still learning both.

Boutwell Jones
Red Clay Gospel

The devil does not need you cruel.

Cruelty is obvious.

For years I believed
there were good men
and I was working my way toward them.

He does not need you drunk in a ditch,
stealing from your neighbor,
or running from God.

Sometimes respectable will do.

Pay your bills.
Love your children.
Hold the door for the old woman.

Be the kind of man
people speak well of at your funeral.

Then stand before God
holding all of it in your hands.

The Pharisee brought evidence.

He prayed.
He fasted.
He kept the rules.

The thief beside Jesus
had almost nothing left.

No reputation to repair.
No good works to perform.
No tomorrow to become a better man.

Only enough breath
to ask Christ to remember him.

And Christ did.

Grace requires empty hands.

It means admitting
the old woman you held the door for
cannot save you.

Neither can the money you gave,
the church you attended,
or the good name you spent a lifetime building.

Those things may be good.

They are simply not God.

The danger was never goodness.

The danger was believing
goodness could do the work of the cross.

The devil does not have to make
a man hate Jesus.

Sometimes he only has to convince him
he is doing well enough without Him.

I have stood at that door.

I held it open for everyone.

I never walked through.

Boutwell Jones

redclaygospel.com

There are still places

where man has not yet managed

to make himself the center of everything.

No pavement.

No steeple.

No microphone.

Just mountains rising out of the earth

like they have been standing watch

since before anyone thought to name them.

A river working its way through stone

long before anyone was there to watch it.

Tundra turning gold in the early cold.

Snow gathering on peaks

no hand has ever shaped.

Then the sun drops behind the range

and sets the whole sky on fire.

Another day,

a rainbow stretches across miles of Alaska

with nobody there to improve it.

That may be the humbling part.

None of it needs us.

The mountain does not care who you are.

The river does not know your résumé.

The wilderness has no interest

in the little kingdoms we spend our lives building.

The titles.

The corner offices.

The names on the door.

You stand there long enough

and something begins to shrink.

Hopefully it is you.

Weybo went into that country

after the fourteenth of the North American 29.

The Dall sheep had been the thirteenth.

This time it was the Alaska-Yukon moose,

the largest member of the deer family on earth.

A long way from Baker County.

A long way from the courthouse,

the flat fields,

the heat that hangs on into fall.

He walked forty miles in eight days.

Calling.

Listening.

Calling again.

Eating berries where he found them

and rations he had put together

before he ever left home.

For eight days

the wild said very little back.

On the eighth day of ten,

with the hunt nearly spent,

the bull answered.

Fifty inches is the mark for a big bull.

This one went sixty-eight,

carrying paddles

wider than his own body.

One shot.

Two hundred eighty-eight yards.

And the valley went quiet.

Sixty-eight inches will go in the book.

That may not be the part

that stays with a man.

Because somewhere between the valleys,

the weather,

and the distance,

the caller becomes the one being called.

Not by an animal.

By creation itself.

Paul wrote that the invisible things of God

are clearly seen

in the things that are made.

So that we are without excuse.

He did not mean it as a compliment.

He meant it as a verdict.

Nobody gets to say

they were never told.

The sermon has been hanging over every ridge

since the first morning.

Maybe that is why the wilderness feels holy.

Not because God lives there

more than anywhere else.

He is just as near

over a peanut field in Baker County

as over any mountain in Alaska.

The difference is

there is less of us out there

to block the view.

And here is the mercy in it.

Being small is not the punishment.

It is the relief.

Nothing out there

was ever waiting on you

to hold it up.

The wild has been preaching

since the beginning.

It never raised its voice.

It never passed a plate.

It simply kept telling the truth

until a man from southwest Georgia,

eight days into calling out,

got quiet enough

to hear what had been calling him.

“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.”

Romans 1:20

Boutwell Jones
Red Clay Gospel

By five, she had already been working two hours.

Coffee brewing.
Pastries set out.
Small things moved until they looked right.

Her supervisor stopped by to check on her.

There was nothing to check.

Every trip, every morning,
I come down for the family’s coffee.

Four lattes, at least.
Two vanilla. Two caramel.
Oat milk in every one.

She knows the order by now.

Four lattes take a while.

So I ask her something,
and she gives me the whole story.

Where she is from.
How her brother is doing at Bella.
Her whole week, start to finish.

Then she sets all four on a plate,
lids and all,
so I can get them back to the family
without a spill.

She paints.
She sings.
She dances.

I have seen the paintings.

But most mornings her canvas is a coffee station,
finished before the rest of us
are awake enough to see it.

Six days a week.
Sometimes seven.

When she gets a day off,
she cooks and cleans
and calls her family back in Tepoztlán.

She has learned more languages than I ever will.

Someday she will be somewhere else,
making something entirely her own.

I hope so.

But this morning,
while it was yet night in Cabo,
the coffee was hot,
the pastries were out,
and the small things had been moved
until they looked right.

Nobody asked her to.

The first thing I ever asked her,
three years ago,
was how to say her name.

“Any,” she said.
“Like Orphan Annie.”

She has been answering ever since.

Boutwell Jones
Red Clay Gospel

Cabo. Before light.
I walked out with the phone.

The moon was four percent.
A rind. A clipping. Almost gone.

I took the picture anyway.

The whole circle came back.
Gray and complete inside the bright edge.

Earth had been throwing sunlight back at it.

The part I called dark
was catching light from where I stood.

Jupiter held above it.

Then the sky went gray at the water line.

Boutwell Jones
Red Clay Gospel

Top row (L-R): Roughrider, Jeff Thaggard, Eddie from Buffalo’s Tallahassee, Uncle Joseph Walter Jones,

Front Row (L-R): Shane (Boutwell Jones), John Bradley, Mack Mitchell, and Frog.

The photograph was taken around 1992.

Eight of us on the dock at midday. A pink laundry basket. White sneakers gone dark at the toe.
Reds laid out on the concrete in a pile that went on longer than the frame could hold.

Rough Rider was there.
Uncle Joey was there.
They called me Ice at the time but that era was melting away….
I am the shirtless one kneeling in front of Rough Rider, holding the kingfish like it weighed something.

There was Mack. John Bradley. Jeff Thaggard. Eddie from Buffalo’s in Tallahassee.
And Frog.

That alone should tell you this was not a board meeting.

I was in Athens then, still a college student.
I would come home and go south with these men,
out toward the Gulf after grouper and red snapper.

J. Lovic Jones had fished those waters.
The L in H&L was Lovic.
The plant sat in Pelham, Georgia, but the roads ran much farther.
Albany. Valdosta. Tallahassee.
Then Monticello. Dothan. Panama City Beach.
Red clay on one end. Red Hills on the other.

Food moved through it. People moved through it. Families did too.

The trucks were already feeding kitchens whose names would become familiar later.
Guthrie’s was already on the road.
Layne’s in College Station meant nothing to any of us yet.
My daughter would graduate from Florida State and love Tallahassee.
My son would go to College Station.
Friends would settle there.
Family already had.
The same names and places kept showing up decades later,
as if the map had been drawn before any of us learned to read it.

You think you are going fishing.
You think somebody is just running a route.
You think a warehouse in Pelham is only a warehouse.
Then enough years pass.
You look at an old photograph.
A marina. A pile of fish.

A pink basket somebody will carry home.
And Lovic still running through all of it.

Boutwell Jones

redclaygospel.com

What I’ve Learned: 6–10

6. No one is coming to save you.

7. No one has it figured out.

8. We are all jacked up.

9. Stay humble, stay thirsty, and reach for the stars.

10. Smile and tell someone today that they matter and that God has a plan for them.

Coaching life was fantastastical for me.

I was able to be a full-time athletic director, a head coach, and fortunate enough to spend a lot of years around young people, including my own.

Over the span of two and a half decades, I met many.

I taught some things.

I learned far more.

The road was rocky and murky at times.

With the kids came the family, or maybe better said, the team around the athlete.

That is where the fun really began.

During my years coaching softball in Atlanta, I remember a mother and father walking up to me after practice upset about their daughter’s development.

She was six.

Six years old, playing 6U fast-pitch softball.

Neither parent had played organized sports, but they had very specific ideas about the drills we should run, the techniques we should use, and how their daughter needed to be developed.

I listened.

For thirty-five minutes.

I thanked them for their time and watched them walk back toward the parking lot.

My two assistant coaches, both former Major League Baseball players, were standing nearby.

One of them smiled and said something close to:

“You’re welcome to bench my kid next game and let that star family shine for a few games.”

So we did.

The next couple of games were a disaster.

Not long after that, the family left in search of a better coach and a better team.

Over the next ten years, I watched them spend what had to be a small fortune on lessons, training and travel sports.

I remember thinking later that if all that money had gone into an account for her, college tuition, books, room and board might have been sitting there waiting when she graduated from high school.

Turns out she did not need sports to tell her who she was….

The girl could paint.

Really paint.

She became a “successful” artist. Because that is all sports really is at the end of the day….entertainment art…and we all have a responsibility to foster that artistic side.

We were all staring at the softball field trying to figure out how to develop the athlete.

Her gift was somewhere else entirely.

My wife, Christy, developed a philosophy during those years that stuck with me and still does:

“Use sports. Don’t let sports use you.”

I understood that line better as I got older.

Later in my coaching career, the need to be right had faded.

What mattered more was making sure young people had a chance to enjoy the game and find their place in it.

Sometimes that meant cutting a kid from a team where meaningful playing time was never going to come.

Sometimes it meant adding a JV or freshman squad so more kids could play at a level where they could actually get on the field or the floor.

Maturity did not give me the power to change human behavior.

It did not make parents see what I saw.

It did not make kids see it either.

And it certainly did not make the team surrounding the athlete understand every decision I made.

The only thing I really had was the truth behind my motives.

And the willingness to look a kid in the face and tell them the truth.

Maybe that was part of coaching too.

A small introduction to adulthood.

Life is not always fair.

Everybody does not make the team.

Everybody does not start.

Sometimes you work hard and somebody else is still better.

Sometimes the answer is no.

And no one, I mean no one, is coming to save you.

I remember seeing one young man in public after he had quit one of my teams.

He had not quit because he wasn’t having fun.

His dad wasn’t having fun.

There is a difference.

When I saw him, I could see disappointment in him.

Maybe even regret.

Years earlier, I might have wanted him to know that I had been right.

By then I did not need that anymore.

I looked him in the eyes and told him the truth.

The same truth I had tried to tell him when he was on the team.

That is about all any coach really has at the end of the day.

The truth.

And whether the kid standing in front of you believes you cared enough to tell it.

Now I have the luxury of looking back over all those years.

The regrets are few.

The joys are many.

I think I stay on LinkedIn mostly for the former players who still use the moniker “Coach” when they greet me or send a congratulatory note.

There is something about that word.

I was so much older in my playing days than I am now after the experience of coaching.

The lessons and development opportunities continue to pile up, somehow moving from the pages of my mind toward my heart.

That’s the crux.

Show me your passions and I’ll show you your heart.

Show me your priorities and eventually they will expose the motives behind many of your actions and reactions.

Connect the two and eventually they tell the truth about you.

So if you get a chance to coach, if you find the time to lead or teach or train, understand that you have taken on both a calling and a responsibility.

Being married isn’t easy.

Parenting is the toughest job I have ever known.

But coaching, being called Coach, refined me.

It exposed the shadows and the motives.

For better and for worse, it showed me parts of myself I might otherwise have missed.

James warned people not to rush toward becoming teachers because teachers would be held to a stricter standard.

I understand that better now too.

There is weight in being the person standing in front of somebody else.

Especially a kid.

First you learn how to coach the game.

Then you learn how to coach the kid.

Eventually you learn that neither the game nor the kid belongs to you.

They may forget the score.

They may forget the drill.

They may even forget what you told them.

But there is a decent chance they will remember how it felt when you believed in them.

And every once in a while, twenty-five years later, they will see you somewhere or send you a note and call you Coach.

That may be enough.

Boutwell Jones

redclaygospel.com

Some things I’ve learned as I get closer to 6 decades on earth….Top 5…

1. You only have today, right now, the present. Best to treat this time as a gift and not a curse.

2. Breathing is not optional but breathing fresh air and exhaling the air in a healthy manner is a choice.

3. Love time but limit it for seasons, family, and those friends you may not have much longer because…

4. 80 percent of people don’t care and the other 20 percent are actively looking to spread toxins and poison into the ecosystem

5. If you don’t have something nice to say, at least make sure it’s true and delivered in love and empathetic tone. You never know what some one is dealing with and you may find yourself in need of a return favor. When this one seems confusing, re-read 1-4 above.
   
   

   Someone Buttoned His Shirt

   Kierkegaard believed there comes a place where the crowd can no longer carry your faith.
   
   The boy did not know enough to doubt anything.
   
   Someone combed his hair.
   Someone buttoned his shirt.
   Someone told him about God.
   
   But God had already found him
   on a cinder block at the old farm on Highway 97,
   in a lightning storm,
   before anybody thought to explain it.
   
   Then vacation Bible school at Hopeful Baptist.
   A prayer card in his hand.
   The walk down front.
   
   He signed what had already burned through him.

   

   
   
   They wanted a record.
   He gave them one.
   
   There were churches then.
   Sunday schools.
   People who knew the answers.
   
   He grew up.
   
   Some of the answers did not.
   
   There were years when faith came easily
   because everybody around him was saying the same words.
   
   Then came the places nobody could go with him.
   
   Loss.
   Fear.
   Marriage.
   Nights awake.
   
   The long work of becoming a man
   when nobody was watching.
   
   The boy is an old photograph now.

   

   
   
   Gray beard.
   Weathered skin.
   A cross against his chest.

   

   
   
   The card is gone.
   
   The cross came with him.
   The crowd did not.
   
   The boy is still looking straight ahead.
   
   Boutwell Jones

redclaygospel.com

There comes an hour when the road stops pretending it goes on forever…..

Granny Sue lived in a cinder block home with two and half porches and she would strategically turn on the lights…

…whether any one was coming home or not.

You just never knew.

One light is practical, but multiple lights is a pattern.

I never asked her about it.

You do not ask a woman why she does the things she does. I have found the result of the question may cause you much pondering and processing that is needless.

You just notice the yard is never completely dark and that you can find the steps without feeling for them.

Some call that hour darkness.

I am unsure.

Night makes some lights easier to see.

Maybe the promise was never that darkness would remain absent or forget to arrive at the station.

Maybe it was only that somebody is still turning them on for you to see.

Boutwell Jones

First Came the telescope…

Then a star chart.

Then a red flashlight so the chart would not ruin my eyes.

Granny Sue did not know the physics. She knew the names.

Out there the sky started at the fence lines and seemed to roll on forever…

She pointed with her whole arm, the way you point at something you expect a child to find.

The cigarette, meanwhile, remained in the other hand.

Orion in the winter. The dippers turning through the year (little and big). The seven stars in the cold.

She never explained what any of it meant.

She bought tools for a boy to see things she could not reach and would not live to see him reach either.

I still call them the Seven Sisters.

Boutwell Jones

redclaygospel.com