Chapel of Hope Stories

Dear Reader:

A few days ago Susan sent me an interesting article about raising thankful kids in an entitled culture.

Until very recent times children definitely had back seats in the hierarchy of societal importance and attention received throughout history. But today it appears that children are living in the golden age of an entitlement culture. This culture says that a parent’s job is to make their children happy at all costs. So the child’s interpretation is give me the latest gadgets, the cool clothes and give me the most advantages.

Somehow this notion has been blown completely out of context… providing happiness is not a parent’s job… raising confident, faith-filled adults who will contribute to society is.

Author Susan Alexander Yates ( How to Raise Thankful Kids in an Entitled Culture) gives four suggestions how to teach children to be appreciative for what they have and then pass their appreciation on to others.

1. Remember parents… You are not running for most popular parent.. saying ” No” is not a bad thing. Set limits on material things… instead spend more one on one time with your child.

2. Don’t succumb to parental peer pressure. Guard your family time… for every yes to one outside activity …balance it with a no.

3. Teach your children to become ” other-centered.” Create opportunities for your children to serve others

4. Appreciation must be taught… thank you notes, thank other parents carpooling, thank your teacher for helping you or someone who writes you a recommendation… for every good deed respond with gratitude.

So until tomorrow… when we learn to appreciate our fellow man… it enhances our appreciation of our Heavenly Father. A person not growing in human thankfulness will be less likely to be growing in spiritual faith and appreciation of our Creator God! like Beverly Barutio wrote… our ” Thank you note to God.”

” Today is my favorite day”

Dear Reader:

Occasionally when a ” nothing” day rolls around ( like yesterday) I can just feel all the tension slowly oozing out of me … and it gives me time to pause and appreciate the ordinary beauty around me.

I ordered this book on moonflowers to give Anne to take on her Alaska trip throughout most of September. But right after giving it away… I did a stupid thing-I was cleaning out and watering my climbing trellis of moonflowers when I realized I had cut the ” main water artery” to the leaves. I was heartbroken… but unbeknownst to me one artery was still working and the title pictures show the two furled moonflowers still surviving and trying their darnedest to bloom -evening will tell.

Isn’t it crazy how neurons can pick up on an image from the past with one word-in this case ” nothing?”

My ” Uncle J. B. ” ( kin folk farmer whose cotton fields connected to Grandpa Charlie’s) was a ” Goliath ” of a man… especially in overalls. It seemed like there was something always wrong with his health… heart, gout-etc but still he was one of the funniest men around.

The few times the farm families took time to celebrate the crops he was always entertaining the crowds… here is J. B’s ” famous ” nothing” joke.

Talking about the poor plight of the cotton farmer…” We started out with nothing and I imagine when we die…we will still have most of it left.”

J. B. could even laugh at all his ailments… ” At a certain age in life…it’s no longer a question of staying healthy. It’s a question of finding a sickness you like.”

Part of the reason I needed a down’ day yesterday was cheering for Rutledge playing his first football game of the season at Phillip Simmons High School. He is the quarterback.

Walsh and Mollie kept sending me photos and videos throughout that hot hot game! I might have been home but I was jumping up and down the whole game!

Rutledge had a great start scoring several times and the team won by quite a substantial margin. My niece Ady cheered at her first Sertoma game at Wando-a busy Saturday!

***So glad Clemson didn’t start Saturday… I would have had nothing left in me to give! The plight of a grandmother!

So until tomorrow…

” ” Today is my favorite day” Winnie the Pooh

Dear Reader:

Years ago I happened to be at Brittlebank Park, with friends, watching the sunset over the Ashley River when something caught our attention… ” dragon boats” were pulling on to shore amid happy calls and much paddle waving. A group of cancer survivors were practicing for the Dragon Boat Charleston upcoming competition.

One friend vaguely remembered the Chinese legend behind the event… it had to do with a famous statesman, advisor, and poet who was exiled by a jealous king.

Feeling dishonored the poor man threw himself in the torrents of a nearby river but local fishermen saved him by wildly beating their drums and splashing their paddles to keep the water dragons from killing the poor man.

The modern Dragon Boat race is a symbolic reenactment of the power of drums and paddlers working together to keep the dragons of disease and death at bay.

Friday when I went to my mailbox… a deja vu moment awaited me. I had just sent a friend a Thinking Of You card while simultaneously she had done the same thing for me-our notes had crossed in the mail! And hers had a sketch of the Dragon Boat Charleston Legend on it!

I started laughing out loud! Here I was thinking of Debbie Baker as she was recuperating from a recent health scare and she had read about my exhaustion and depletion with Ben’s health issues and had sent me a thinking of you note.

***I had not been that excited since Freddie Jones and I successfully threw paper airplanes across the classroom-one high and one low without getting caught by our ” dragon” fourth grade teacher… Mrs. Persons!

There was one written observation Debbie had found and enclosed in her card that just nailed the essence of my past few weeks… I will save it forever!

” If you are uncomfortable-in deep pain, angry, yearning, confused-you don’t have a problem, you have a life!

” Being human is not hard because you’re doing it wrong, it’s hard because you’re doing it right!”

Debbie added playfully…” Well, ain’t that the truth!”

So until tomorrow…

My one sprig of lantana makes me smile because this one lone bloom hasn’t spread to any great degree but it just keeps blooming!

Dear Reader:

As the month of August begins winding down… so do my reflections on how my connection to St. Jude’s Chapel in the woods began…pausing to bring closure to one part of the creation story while opening up myself to new possibilities of future tales waiting to be told by people I am still to meet. Anticipation!

I want to end with the amazing woman who started it all… Beverly Barutio. The brave woman who turned her health and life over to God and St. Jude…and then never tried to grab back the reins! Courage at its bravest!

Around 2011 Bill Barutio sent me a book of poetry by Beverly that I will cherish forever. Just reading the introduction sent shivers of appreciation down my back.

It read: To my children: You are my flesh, Blood of my blood, But more than this…You are my ” Thank you” note to God.

What a thoughtful dedication… the idea that the gifts we have been given are all thank you notes sent to God… to be served by him.

In the mid-eighties, with her veins collapsing due to heavy cancer chemo treatments, Beverly made the brave decision to thank her doctors and move with her adored husband, Bill, to a ” hamlet” called Trust… thus forming a two person population status.

After turning her health over to God she never looked back. She and Bill restored a post Civil War home and built the Trust cafe that brought surrounding Hot Springs neighbors to their diner-By 1990 the structure for the chapel had begun and was complete in 1991.

By the mid- nineties it was obvious Beverly’s cancer was once again spreading so she and Bill left Trust for Edisto Island, SC.

But Beverly never lost her keen sense of humor as illustrated by the first lines in her short autobiography.

” I was born at a very young age in Jefferson County, Iowa, because I wanted to be near my family. I moved to Savannah, Georgia because they didn’t raise much corn there, and it was near a body of water larger than our cow pond in Iowa.”

However, of all the stories and poems she wrote, my favorite is the dedication of the poetry book to her husband!

” To my husband Bill, without whom I am only Me…with whom I am, at last, totally Myself!”

So until tomorrow… What if we wrote God a thank you note … letting Him know… that we are only a little ” Me, alone but with Him in our lives, at last we are totally ourselves.” The perfect thank you note to God!

My blue Plumbago and orange Anthurium!

” Today is my favorite day” Winnie the Pooh

I hope you enjoyed our excursion back into the past where Chapel of Hope began … I sure did! Back to my guardian angels Mike and Honey Burrell!

Beverly Barutio passed in 2002 -after throwing herself the best send-off party ever… in 2010 I found myself again and my purpose in life at the chapel she built for those who were lost and didn’t know it! Me!

Dear Reader:

How many of us have heard expressions similar to ” Keep the trust… but a little luck “don’t” hurt either? ”

Yesterday was one of those days when trust and luck seemed to be fighting it out for supremacy and by day’s end I didn’t know whether to pray or search for my shamrock!

But if you really want to experience trust and luck … simultaneously and geographically… head to a tiny blot of land located at the corner of Highway 209 and State Road 63 into NC. In other words between Spring Creek, Trust, Luck, and Sandymush! P. S. Good luck finding it-trust your instincts!

A 1903 ledger located in Trust General Store and Cafe is on display evidencing the old barter system whereby corn, eggs, chicken, and meats were exchanged for staples and merchandise. The general store soon evolved into a mail distribution center in the early 1900’s.

There are two versions of how the towns Trust and Luck got their names. In the first version a group of settlers were trying to choose a name for the new post office. The heated debate was cut short when a dog belonging to Farmer Price wandered in. The dog’s name was Trust.

In the second version, according to Pink Plemmons, founder of Luck, a letter was sent to the Postmaster General pointing out the need for post offices in the area, saying the community put their “Trust and Luck” that they would get one… and they were so named!

For years just seeing the dilapidated old garage with empty gasoline tanks… a driver knew he was ” out of luck. ”

But today take time to see two more structures before you ( not counting St. Jude’s Chapel of Hope) leave this quaint spot of past Americana at its best!

The sculpture to Trust

Trust is in Madison County, NC … after seeing the Clint Eastwood movie Bridges over Madison County… nothing would do for Beverly Barutio than to share her love of the movie by building her own covered bridge over Madison County.

So until tomorrow… always look for a rainbow to seal a covenant with God and as ” luck” would have it-an earlier summer shower turned into a rainbow as we headed back up the mountains… the blog was created!

” Today is my favorite day” Winnie the Pooh

Dear Reader:

On July 26, 2010 I first laid eyes on St. Jude’s Chapel of Hope. By that time, unbeknownst to me, Beverly Barutio, had passed eight years earlier. But even death would not stop the connection that was soon to develop between us… uniting a creator/builder and a storyteller.

Here is an excerpt from the first blog post I nervously posted on August 7, 2010. My purpose in life was sealed…become part of my grandchildren’s lives and write a post a day to share stories of every genre imaginable in honor of Beverly Barutio and her life-altering chapel.

Title: Unraveling the Mystery of St. Jude’s Chapel of Hope

Do you like to solve mysteries? Are you intrigued by things that can’t be seen…only felt. Do you agree with the quotation: ” Faith is taking the first step…even when you don’t see the whole staircase?” If you have answered ” Yes” to these questions, then welcome to Becky’s Blog!

I went on to describe myself…”I am not as young as I used to be, but not as old as I hope to be.” ( And 11 years later… even miraculously I have grown older)

I ended with a Native-American proverb… ” It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story.” Then I added…“This is where you, dear reader, come in! I need you to share your story, if you have been to St Jude’s and left one of hundreds of trinkets on the altar…

What ” trinket” I left that first visit was the title picture you see today of Mandy, myself, and newborn Eva Cate. For years it sat on the altar waiting on me to return. Honey informed me from her last visit that the owner today had cleaned up the altar and put the trinkets in cases for safekeeping.

Even though I left a box filled with requests for visitors to share their stories on what pulled them to the chapel and perhaps the story behind their trinket left behind… it never happened. So I realized that I would have to forge my own path with all kinds of observations about life in all kinds of various formats.

Eleven years later, this month, I am still cranking out a new story a day and pray it continues to honor the woman and chapel behind this life changing gift I have been blessed to receive.

So until tomorrow… Never let an opportunity slip through your fingers… we never know if it is the chance to discover the purpose of our lives.

” Today is my favorite day” Winnie the Pooh

Look at my early birthday present from Anne who will be in Alaska next month! She tie-dyed this apron for me! See the dolphins! Love it!

Dear Reader:

This beautiful stain-glass window isn’t in St. Jude’s Chapel of Hope… but in Aldersgate Methodist Church in North Charleston where yesterday I gave a short message to the Women of the Church as they stoically and determinedly outlined their hopes for the outreach programs in the upcoming year.

Covid or no Covid, variant or no variant, their arms would be outstretched for any one needing a hand. Amazing Women… who were all included in the title of my talk… We Are the Miracles.

It wasn’t until I started telling my personal miraculous journey from breast cancer to Eva Cate ( my first grandchild’s arrival) to a spirit of a woman who built a chapel to God and Saint Jude in a tiny town called Trust, NC … that I suddenly saw God’s Hand in everything that had transpired! A deja vu shudder of delight and mystery.

As I was sharing the 2011 newspaper article with them … reading how the columnist started the story with the chapel and spirit of

Beverly Barutio waiting on me to arrive… all God’s signs concerning my purpose in life materialized.

Suddenly I realized how important 2011 was with letting the story of the chapel filter out into the world. It was the year our team, St Jude’s Chapel of Hope, formed to walk in the first ( of many) breast cancer “Race for the Cure” fundraisers.

Right before our first family race… Tommy wrote this article that was published in the Post and Courier! ( Excerpt)

” In our family we seemingly talk in two particular cliches when we refer to our mother’s breast cancer. We say ” it is what it is” and we always try to keep things ” in perspective.”

” While there may be some who belittle the oversimplification of what is an extremely complicated situation, those two small, innocuous statements relegate themselves to a rarified meaning. They give less an explanation, but rather lead us to acknowledge that cancer does not define our mother. That although she may be identified as someone with cancer, cancer is not her identity.

” Mom is a survivor, not a cancer survivor and certainly not a cancer victim. There is nothing more certain in this world to me than the fact nothing will beat my mother. Her legacy will remain on this earth long after she is gone, long after those reading this are gone.

” My certainty of these truths comes from the fact our mother never opined why she came to her current situation. Instead her first instinct, as a life long educator, was to figure out a way to pass on her knowledge and wisdom. ”

( Tommy went on to tell about the fictional contest between me and Scheherazade-my desire to ” best” the legendary author by writing 1002 stories. Coincidentally Tommy said it lead to the date May 29, 2013-the anniversary of my initial surgery May 29, 2008. )

Tommy concluded … ” Mother’s journey will not end after 1002 days. She will live on and so will her stories.” ( To date Tommy’s prophesy has come true. )

So until tomorrow… ” If you want to change the world, pick up a pen and write.” Martin Luther

” Today is my favorite day” Winnie the Pooh

After leaving Aldersgate Methodist Church I traveled on to visit Ben at Wellmore… he wanted to show me something. The coordinator for physical activities helped Ben create a makeshift hole and putt on ” Barbour Hall.”

She is also going to get Ben to help others learn the basics of golf at a nearby golf club starting in September! 👍He is excited!

Dear Reader:

The picture above was the most looked at photo in 2015 in my mobile phone’s photo albums…even though the original picture had been the impetus for the creation of the blog post five years earlier.

It is important to remind myself at certain intervals to go back and re-tell / update the story on how this blog post came about…

When a reader pulls the post each day… he/ she can discover the story behind the story’ by simply clicking on The Chapel of Hope Connection –located directly under my name ( About Becky Dingle) in the far right hand column!

I took the time to go back-in 2015- and catch up new readers who hadn’t been there from the start in August 2010. The response was overwhelming!

Besides Beverly Barutio’s story recapturing a lot of hearts in 2015… I began hearing from her children and grandchildren !

Jessica Martin: Beverly was my mamaw, it’s so awesome to see this! It warms my heart and I know she would love it too!

Christina Petersen: Thank you so much for the kind words about our beloved Mamaw and the chapel. It is so wonderful to see how something she was so passionate about has touched so many lives. She truly was the best!

It wasn’t until the following year that I received another message from Beverly’s son… appropriately on Mother’s Day Weekend!

John LaBarbera: Folks, this was/ is the chapel my mother and father built many years ago while she was battling cancer. The kind words shared here make me humbled and appreciative of her… and YOU folks who have written here and in the book kept in the chapel itself. As I read and reflect on her this Mother’s Day, I thank God for her and the kind people who have passed through that door. God bless you all.

I remain so inspired by Beverly’s story that several years ago I wrote a poem in tribute to Beverly and her life-altering chapel.

So until tomorrow…Thank you Father for leading us to the special places along our life’s journey …where we are meant to pause, reflect, re-new and always return.

” Today is my favorite day” Winnie the Pooh

Dear Reader:

Now that I have allowed myself to go back down memory lane … eleven years in the making… my head is exploding with recollections I have not entertained in so long… I am having to shake the dust off them.

In the title photo… you see Beverly Barutio, the creator of St. Jude’s Chapel of Hope… the picture taken soon after the chapel was complete.

Beverly’s miracle save from God and St Jude came in the mid-eighties when she informed her oncologist she was stopping chemo treatments and going to live the rest of her life out the best she could( doctors told her less than a year-the cancer had spread to her liver and bone marrow.)

Beverly began praying for time to make changes in her life and be with family… besides God… she prayed to St Jude, the patron of improbable but not impossible causes.

When she received this fifteen plus year miracle she resolved to give back to the little town of Trust, NC and build a chapel where all who sought refuge could come. The home she and her husband Bill lived in ( Civil War home) she named ” Plum Nilly” -as in located ” Plum out of Asheville and Nilly to Tennessee. “

She and Bill built a little cafe for the locals to come dine and soon word spread that Beverly was the best pie baker around. She always wore an apron that read ” Kiss the Cook.”

When Bob Hurley… a newspaper columnist called me and asked if he could meet me…Honey and I met him in late October of 2011.

A few weeks later the article showed up in the Greenville Sun. When Bob Hurley went to introduce himself and his wife on that chilly mountain day earlier… he whispered ” Beverly and I have been waiting on you for a long time.”

Apparently Bob had suggested, on several occasions, that Beverly collect stories from the visitors around the world who now came to the compelling little chapel in the woods. But Beverly shook her head and informed Bob that her mission was to build it-another else would come along to tell its stories.

Isn’t it a nice feeling to know someone is waiting on you… that a little chapel in a little mountain town has been bidding it’s time… waiting on you to reveal its secrets… one story at a time.

Since Bob Hurley, the columnist knew Beverly before me… he lamented the fact that we weren’t destined to meet on this side of life ( he thought our personalities and outlooks on life were eerily similar) but one day what a great reunion we had in store on the other side!

Bob’s article titled ” Stories from Tiny Mountain Chapel Now Being Shared with the World” started out in the first paragraph with this observation…

” Somewhere in the back of my mind, I always knew that Becky Dingle would come along and share the story of St Jude’s Chapel of Hope with the whole world.”

So until tomorrow… isn’t it nice to know that someone is waiting on you to come along and share their story when they no longer can? In life… it is always about the story!

” Today is my favorite day” Winnie the Pooh

Greenville Sun -Bob Hurley-columnist-Nov. 19, 2011

Dear Reader:

This month marks the 11th year of the Chapelofhope stories. It all began on August 7, 2000! The biggest turning point in my life. ..when I decided to reach out into the new frontier … at least for me… cyberspace.

I was physically shaking I was so nervous but I was more scared of never going after my dream of writing… unleashing a lifetime of locked up stories, thoughts, and ideas.

By August 31… the last day of this cornerstone month in the new millennium …my competition with the fabled Scheherazade began and I never looked back… even after the 1002nd story was told I was on to the next story.

Writing is not just my passion…it is as integral a part of my life as breathing. It is my connection to people’s lives, feelings, hopes and dreams … at least as close as I will ever get on this earth. We are all connected and never do I feel this more than while writing, reading and listening to your thoughts!

… And what a great thought came in from Jo Dufford yesterday… a God Wink for this blog post.

Since recently we have been sharing thoughts about unconsciously depleting our energy reserves until suddenly sirens go off inside our bodies and minds… blinking bright red to STOP and wait on reserves.

Jo sent me this thought, aka author Barbara Johnson…

” The brook would lose its song if God removed the rocks.”

Once again we are being reminded that there is a purpose under the sun for every obstacle that we encounter along the way.

I go back to the first time I saw St. Jude’s Chapel of Hope in Trust, North Carolina on a hot July afternoon and how I knew I was home-this was where I was supposed to be at that moment. The chapel had been waiting…

Outside butterflies were in abundance and the brook was singing joyously as it’s melody was created by the stones in its path.

I remember one of the first stories I wrote was” Keeping Cancer at Bay … One Story at a Time. And for eleven years that has exactly transpired!

So until tomorrow… welcome the beautiful songs of the brook made possible by the stones encountered along its winding way.

“Today is my favorite day”

Fun with Mollie and kids!

Our gymnast-Lachlan

Our football quarterback!

Our cheerleader-Eloise

Great way to brighten a Gray day!