I grew up in the 1960s in a fundamentalist church that was loosely tied to a denomination but also very independent. The church was more of a cult as the church leaders, mother and son, owned the church building and ran the church as their own small religion. Whatever they said was the Word of God. The people who attended there regularly were mostly uneducated blue collar workers who had a very literal view of the Bible. They believed that the pastor was the voice of God and that they should obey whatever the pastor told them to do or not to do. Most of them were just country folk who worked hard and got their excitement from attending church services and functions.

The church was of the Pentecostal variety which meant that the pastor believed in speaking in tongues and demonstrations of the Spirit. Those demonstrations including people often jumping a pew or two, dancing in the aisles, singing along with the equivalent of a rock or country-western band (depending on mood of the pastor), and people offering messages in tongues and the interpretation of those messages. Services typically lasted two to three hours each Sunday morning and Sunday night and most Wednesday nights.

My mother took me and my brother and sister to this church all through our growing up experiences. I escaped when I began college as did my sister. Our brother bought into it wholeheartedly and was one of the central characters in the acting out of the drama that happened each time a service was held. Our mother was his cheerleader and anything he did in a charismatic way brought a smile to her face. My sister and I were the ones she was constantly trying to save from the pits of hell and she worked on us as long as she had us close. Thank God for higher education and the ability to drive a vehicle.

During the years of my forced attendance at this church, I was taught many things that the pastor insisted was biblical even though there is little biblical evidence to support any of them. I was forced to live a life behind the backs of my parents and those in authority in the church because I did those things that the pastor insisted was sinful and should never be done. This is my attempt to help others who may have been subjected to similar lines of thinking by some in religious circles.

Dancing—for some reason some preachers think that dancing is the root of all evil (unlike the love of money which is specifically called the root of all evil in the book of James). Our pastor banned all dancing of all kinds–tap, ballet, jazz, but specifically that evil kind where two people hold on to each other and sway to the music that is being played. I think they have remembrances of movies of the WWII era and the decade after it when the Big Band music was popular and people went to supper clubs and danced as the orchestra played. Men and women would hold each other and enjoy the music as they spoke softly to one another and danced. Pastors thought all that holding and whispering was sure to lead to no good so all dancing was forbidden. Then, the rock era came and people danced without touching each other and could hardly hear each other over the sound of the loud music. Surely, dancing was permitted with that new kind of dancing. No, then the complaint was that people “gyrated” in a way the natives of the jungle would to music that was Satanic so again, no dancing allowed. I once approached our pastor and asked him to tell me where in the Bible it said that dancing was a sin. He could not, of course, so he just told me not to do it because he said not to. That carried no weight to this rebellious youth, but my mother thought his word was God’s Word so dancing for me was a hidden pleasure when I had the opportunity. I got caught once dancing at a school dance and had a supreme lecture all the way home from it. Still, the love of dance did not escape me but I just hid it well.

Drinking–of alcoholic beverages, specifically. Again, we were told that drinking alcohol was a sin. No biblical evidence to support this teaching because the Bible has conflicting teachings on the subject if one takes verses from various places in the Bible to make one’s point on the issue. “Wine is a mocker, and strong drink is raging” is one prime verse chosen but they also had to deal with “Take a little wine for your stomach’s sake” and “Moderation in all things”. There are even verses that commend drinking wine as part of a healthy lifestyle. Unfortunately, many who attended this church had relatives who were alcoholics and who had exhibited poor choices in the usage of alcoholic beverages. Alcoholism in those days was not seen as a disease, as it is today, but as overindulgence by people who were unable to make good choices. Family violence and other social ills were often a result of those misguided choices but rather than teach people how to make good choices the church decided that a complete ban on it would solve the problem. I did not drink in high school but when I did decide to drink at the age when it was legal, again it was something that I had to hide from others in my family. No festive holiday dinners complete with a glass of wine for our family. No, tea and water was always good enough.

Going to the Movies–In the 1960s, young people would often go to movies and even have a date with another person to go to a movie. Most of my friends did it and they had no problem telling their parents that they were going to a movie but I always had to “sneak out” and lie to my parents about where I was going and what I intended to do with my time. It was okay for me to go with friends to run the streets of our neighboring larger city. They did not care if I rode up and down one street and another and just wasted gas and had a hamburger. I could be gone for 6 hours and if I said I was doing that, they were okay with it. If, however, I were to say that I was going to the movies with my friends, I would have been forbidden to leave the house. So, lying about going to the movies was something I did regularly. Hiding the evidence (no ticket stubs, please) was something I had to be sure to do. I still remember when I sneaked out by myself on a Saturday and went to a matinee to see “Snowball Express” a Walt Disney movie starring Dean Jones. I sat in the balcony all alone and hoped that no one would see me there with my jacket collar pulled up to my ears to help cover up my identity. The only explanation we ever received at church about why we could not go to the movies was that no one would look at the marquee to see what was playing. They would just see you there and judge you for going to those houses of ill repute.

Bowling–yes, even the simple game of bowling, throwing a heavy ball down a lane to try to knock over 10 pins was forbidden. They did not even try to find biblical evidence to forbid this. They just said that bowling alleys were places where the wrong kind of people hung out. Smokers, drinker, cursers, and people with no good on their minds were all at the bowling alleys. So, I had to find out for myself if all those kinds of folks were there and they rarely showed up on Saturday afternoons when I would go there. I think they may have enjoyed an evening out at the bowling alley or even belonged to one of those infamous leagues of bowlers. The only people I saw when I went were other students or families bowling together. Again, lying took over and I often said I was going shopping. That was allowed in most circumstances.

Cursing–well damn it all to hell, we could never say two of those words. Only the pastor or Sunday School teacher was allowed to use the words “damn” or “hell” and that only if it was reading verses in the Bible that contained those words. We could not say them at all and we could not say words that sounded similar to them such as “dern” which we were told was a soft version of damn so it was not allowed. We could also not say gosh, golly, or gee-whiz. Those were called “by-words” which means they took the place of other swear words but we knew what you were trying to say. Once I said “Gosh” to my mother and I thought I would be beat for it. I replied, “I only said Gosh. I didn’t say Gosh Dern.” I was banned to my room to read the Bible and think about my sins. I once got in trouble for calling my brother a Son of a Bitch. I had heard that word at school and did not know it was a bad word to say. I tried it out and boy did I ever find out not to say it again. No one took the time to ever talk to me about cursing. It was just something you were expected to know.

Listening to Rock Music—The church I attended had a real, authentic record burning. The pastor routinely taught against specific musicians. Elvis Presley and The Beatles were on his forbidden list. Elvis was up to no good with his hip shaking and swaying and those British guys with that long hair were morally corrupt just because of their hair. He had not seen long hair because this was the 60s and longer hair became more common in the 70s and 80s. But if one did not listen to church music, or Gospel music, all the time, then listening to other music was wrong. I had a transistor radio and would stay outside in the summer and listen to the local station that played the popular music of the times. I loved the Monkees, the Beach Boys, the Four Seasons and could sing just about all of their songs. I also liked what was called Bubble Gum Music which was light and easy to sing along with. Listening outdoors prevented me from having conversations with my mother about my evil choice of music.

Then there were the misinterpretations of scripture that were taught as true that I have come to believe are not true later in my life. Some had to do with the way we view others. Some were about how we live our lives around others. Some were apocalyptic in nature and were meant to scare us and keep us under their control. Some were vague and cryptic and only the pastor could really know what they meant.

My mother believed that Jesus would physically appear one day in the clouds. She sincerely believed that he would descend in the clouds with angels and come to rescue those who believed in Jesus and who were totally sinless. The pastor preached this and the ones who could give their message in tongues would reinforce this idea. I knew when I was about 15 that I was doomed because I was not sinless. I had a great many sins, some of which you have learned by reading this post. I lied a lot to my parents. I had to. Otherwise I could not have gone to all the places I wanted to go and do all the things I wanted to do. So, as a liar I was told repeatedly that I had no place in heaven. Therefore, I gave up that hope and decided to just live a lie and do what my friends did who attended churches that did not require them to lie in order to dance or go to movies or listen to the music they liked. The idea of Jesus coming in the clouds did not give me hope, as the Bible is apt to say about such an idea but it scared me to the point that I required counseling to be rid of the fear gleaned from the repetition of such a belief.

The kind of clothing we could wear was also dictated by the pastor and the church and reinforced by my mother. The pastor said it was a sin to wear shorts. I wore shorts and my mother even bought us shorts to wear but when the pastor told us it was sinful to wear shorts, she tried to get us to stop wearing them but we were already accustomed to the feeling of freedom on our legs that wearing shorts provides and we could not stop so the less sinful thing to do was to not wear shorts when the pastor was present. For some reason Mom bought into this idea. I remember having to sit in the car one time when we were out in town and Mom ran into the pastor and wanted to chat. My bare legs could not be exposed to the pastor because I would be branded a sinner for that misdeed.

Jesus does love the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight…that is what we sung. Living out the belief in those words was more difficult when the church I grew up in taught that some of God’s children were more precious than others. Race or ethnic group or sexual orientation or even members of other churches considered to be cults by our church were not as loved by God as we were. Or I should say as the perfect, non-sinful church members were. I was not in that group if you recall because of my need to life to my parents. Others, however, who were constantly having their robes dipped in the blood of the Lamb were as near perfection as they could be so they were ever so special to God even if others were not. There was always an air of superiority in the thinking in that church. They were better than others because they knew the “full gospel” which included the speaking in tongues so God understood what they said more than what people who just spoke in their native language could do.

When I became an adult and had moved away and had not attended those services for years, healing began to come to my life. It took a long time, many years, and with the help of counseling I began to see what had happened to me at that particular church as what it really was–religious abuse. My mother had subjected her children to a belief system that was misguided at best and hurtful at worst. My sister became an agnostic. I became a Methodist and a member of the United Church of Christ (the liberal denomination, not the conservative one with the same name). I found myself in the company or rational thinking adults (for the most part) and soon began to demythologize what had been taught to me in my youth. I no longer needed those thoughts or beliefs because I could think for myself and do on a regular basis. I now drink wine or beer and do not hide it from others. I dance if I want to. I wear any type of clothing I desire. I go to movies or watch them on various media and decide for myself if what I see if helpful or not. I no longer need to believe in an apocalyptic event that will rescue perfect people because there are no such people to rescue. All humans are flawed and in need of redemption. That is the basic tenet of Christianity. So, living a good life and loving God and neighbor is about all I can do to make this life a pleasing one, to me, to God and to others around me.

The rainy season has set in this week. It is funny how we have periods of desert and monsoon here in northeast Texas. Just last week it was hot and dry, way too hot to enjoy, but this week we have been visited several times by long steady, and even hard, rains. Some small creeks running in our city streets. Our yard is lush and green with an abundance of mosquitoes to make us wary of venturing out into the lushness for very long. The rain keeps the water bill and electricity bill from becoming too high in the summer. Both utilities grow as the days are longer and hotter and usually drier but with the visit of rainfall upon us we are glad for the brief respite from the norm.

Life is a bit like that. Long dry spells where we feel much of nothing. Life seems a bit empty and meaningless. Then, a gush of good fortune or unexpected happiness comes by and we feel renewed in spirit. Sometimes it is undeserved. At other times, we have worked to make it happen and enjoy reaping the harvest that comes to us. It cannot last forever. We know that with the harvest comes the next stretch of drought. But for the time being, we will enjoy what we have and give thanks.

Modern life has given us many technical problems to solve. One of them is always knowing the password for the many places on the world wide web that we visit. I had a quandary accessing this site from my new computer I recently purchased. I tried every way I could to get in but it repeatedly told me that my user name and password were not correct. Only by repeated trial and error did I finally access the site and now I am typing for you to read.

One of our new favorite shows to watch on PBS on Saturday nights is the Frankie Drake Mystery show. It is produced in Canada by the CBC and it is mild by American standards but is very entertaining. It is set in the 1920s-30s during Prohibition Days and the group of detectives often visit a speakeasy. Those where the secret bars where people would gather to enjoy food and drink and music. In order to get in, you had to know the password that only the inside crowd could know. Frankie always knows the password and always gets in. It is usually a scene of merriment but sometimes it is a place where she gets clues or access to a new case.

Our passwords are much more difficult than the insider information necessary to get into a speakeasy. We can’t just say “Joe sent me” unless that is your password you assigned (I may have to use that next time I have think up a new one). We are often assigned a password by a website which consists of incomprehensible numbers, letters, and symbols which one cannot memorize. I never use that one but have to try to get one that is useful and easy to remember or how to write them down. I guess I could do that.

It is a shame that our world is a world of passwords because we fear someone may take advantage of us on the world wide web. Passwords are a necessary evil. We must have them but we must remember them also. Passwords remind us that someone has inside information and must keep it to themselves or risk the information getting into hands that may intend harm instead of good. We sometimes have to keep things secret even if we tend to be people open to all the world around us. Good luck negotiating the world and the web. Keep your passwords to yourself and tell only those whom you know you can trust.

There are days on the cultural calendar that are celebrated that are supposed to recognize people who are important to our lives. Fathers Day and Mothers Day are two such days. On those days people give their parents gifts, send them cards, perhaps prepare meals for them if they live close to their parents. People assume that just because someone is a parent then that person is worthy of praise and honor and recognition, but such is not always the case for some of us. Some of us were reared in families that bears the title “dysfunctional”. Some of us had fathers or mothers who were abusive. Some of us were given little or no love by our parents when we were children. Today, those of us who grew up in such circumstances find days such as these to be difficult ones.

My father was physically abusive to me. He beat me on a regular basis. I do not use the term “beat” lightly because I know that many practice corporal punishment with their children and feel it helps to teach them lessons in life and to know right from wrong. I do not agree with spanking children but that is because I did receive beatings, not spankings, from my father. He was a hard working man and a good provider but if I crossed a line that he felt I should not have crossed, then I knew what would happen next. He would pull out his belt out of his pants loops with a whirring sound and then begin hitting me. He would hold my arm with one hand and hit me using the other hand. He would hit me again and again and again until finally he ran out of energy. He would hit me anywhere the belt could hit. He would hit me until marks or bruises were left on my body. He would drop me onto the floor as I wailed from the beating and then just exit the room as if nothing had happened. He would never talk to me about what I may have done wrong but I just knew that I had crossed a line that I had better never cross again. The beatings began when I was just a small child and continued until I was nearly 17 years old. I hated him for years because of the physical abuse I suffered from him but thankfully received counseling when I became an adult and I learned to forgive him. I never seemed to learn to forget about the beatings, though. The pain still emerges in the most unexpected ways.

My wife likes sentimental country music. I do not but I do not complain when she listens to it in my presence. Today, she was playing this old tune, “Daddy’s Hands” which she thought was wonderful and suddenly the song brought back painful memories of how my daddy’s hands were only used to beat me with. He never hugged me or expressed love to me in any way until he was almost ready to die at the age of 86 and then he told me he loved me for the first and last time in my life.

My mother was not physically abusive but she was emotionally abusive. She blamed me for whatever I could be blamed for and berated me for never being good enough. If I crossed her one too many times, she would have an emotional breakdown and slam every cabinet door in the kitchen and then begin to clean out the cabinets, throwing pots and pan around the room until finally she came running toward me with whatever was handy. Luckily, I could outrun her and would escape outdoors to be locked out for the remainder of the day and threatened with a beating from my father when he got in from work. I lived with dread the rest of those hot summer days as I knew what would happen when he got home. Not a word would be said. I would simply be jerked up by the arm and hit until I could not stand up any longer and then left to recover on my own wherever I was placed to be.

I married early in life, at 21, and for years had trouble choosing appropriate cards to give my mother and father on those special days. I wanted one that just said, “You are my mother (or father) and I recognize that.” Too many cards were so sentimental, sticky sweet, exuding the glories of mom and dad and how they were almost saints. Their strong protection and love carried the card giver through the years and the giver was so thankful for them. I was just glad to be alive and simply wanted a simple card to show my thanks for giving me life. I usually found a funny card because sentiment would not work. To laugh is to help hide the pain, something I found easier to do in life than to confront the pain head-on.

So, when Mothers Day and Fathers Day roll around yearly, I try to ignore the many laudatory tributes to moms and dads. My parents are both deceased so I do not have to buy cards or gifts for them any longer. I know where they reside if I choose to find them but rarely go there because the memory of what they did when I was the child they should have loved overshadows any commitment I may have to visit their graves or put flowers upon them. I am the last of my family of origin, the survivor of all of them. I am alone in the world that I grew up in. It is better to be a dad to my own children than to think about how my parents failed me and left me forever imprinted with a pain that I cannot ever rid myself of.

One thing that I inherited from my father was a bad back. The poor man suffered with his back all through his life and often went to the chiropractor for an adjustment, as he called it. He worked in the construction industry so I think handling heavy loads and standing up all through the day played havoc with his back.

I do not work in the construction industry but I have had this back issue all through my adult years. I remember one time I bent over to pick up a dime that I saw on a sidewalk and then could not straighten up. I have had multiple times when for no apparent reason my lower back just began to ache and there was little I could do about it except let the cycle wear itself out. I found out that massage therapy seems to help so if the pain continues for more than a couple days I try to find a massage therapist to work on my back. That usually gives me some relief and the pain gradually goes away.

Isn’t life like that? We go along in our routine and all seems to be well and then out of nowhere a surprise happens to cause an interruption in life. It could be physical pain, as I described, or an emotionally upsetting situation in life that throws us out of balance. People in our life may be the cause of the pain or at least we perceive them to be the cause. Situations arise and we find ourselves unable to deal with them. So many times we are not enough in ourselves and we need outside help.

Massage therapy or physical therapy are modes of assistance that I have turned to over the years to deal with physical pain and recovery from surgery. Counseling and psychotherapy are also avenues of help that I have needed to deal with stressors in life. There is no shame in admitting that we may need help outside of ourselves in order to navigate the waters of life. Some turn to organized religion to find relief. Others turn to drugs or alcohol or excessive work to try to forget their problems. Some forms of relief are beneficial. Others are addictive.

Knowing when we are enough and when we need help is a sign of strength. When we can admit to ourselves that we are not able to handle what is going on in life and we need to find assistance, we are beginning the road to healing and renewal. We can support each other as friends and loved ones but ultimately we as individuals must decide what needs to be done and what source of help we need to find.

I have a somewhat codependent personality based upon my upbringing in a very dysfunctional home. My parents were both uninvolved with their children and lived their own lives of finding ways to cope with their unhappy marriage. My mother turned to organized religion at its most basic level because she would rather have blamed the devil than face up to what she needed to do to be a better mother. My father was the absent father who was kind and gentle until he became angry and then he became physically abusive. My siblings and I lived separate lives as did our parents. We were five people living in one household. We were not a family.

I had to admit that I needed help in dealing with the ghosts of my past when I was in my 30s. I found a counselor who would listen and help me as I poured out my innermost being and shared my hidden secrets that I never wanted anyone to know. He was patient and kind and a good listener. He never tried to tell me what to do but reflected back to me what he heard and helped me to understand what to do to make my life better. I continued counseling off and on until I was in my early 60s. I found it very helpful to deal with life and what I encountered in my job and my life. Counseling was as necessary to my emotional well being as is massage therapy to the pain that plagues my back at times. Healing of body and soul is needed in life. The healers are many and varied who can provide us relief. It is just our task to realize when we need healing and where the quest for healing will take us.

It seems like we are in the rainy season. May was the wettest May in recent history and it provided us with welcome cooler than usual temperatures as well as abundant rainfall. The fields are green as are our lawns which need mowing on a more than regular basis. Some complain about the rain. They say we have more than we need but if our lakes are full and the temperature is lower than it normal for our part of the country then I think things seem to be good for now.

I saw a news article on the local news program yesterday describing how a local rancher was trying to stop the infestation of flies that plague his cattle. He blamed the abundant rainfall for the abundance of flies. He was saying that he has a product that he injects into their ears in some way and that makes the flies leave the cattle alone. At the same time, he blames the wet fields for not allowing him to bale hay so he can feed the cattle when they need hay. It would seem that the cattle could eat the grass in the field whether the field is wet or dry and they do not need hay to supplement their diets. I am not an expert in the cattle industry but that makes sense to me.

News reports from the West Coast told us yesterday that many lakes in California are going dry. A lack of rainfall and less than average snow fall is to blame for this dilemma, they say. The rain seems to be going south and east rather than settling in the west so they are looking for solutions. I once wrote to the President suggesting the building of water pipelines, much like ones that carry oil, so that places with too much water can channel it to other parts of the nation that are in need of water. I think that could be a good part of an infrastructure plan that would put people to work and also provide a solution to our water issues.

Sunshine is needed for plants to grow and for humans to feel complete as we need light to lift our spirits and a certain amount of vitamins that come through sunshine to nourish our bodies. We may get too much sunshine, burning our skin and making us feel uncomfortable. When the weather gets too hot, anything above 90 degrees or so, I tend to become a hermit, staying indoors a lot. I really do not like hot weather and prefer for it to be cooler such as the weather in the Pacific Northwest often is. I would enjoy being a snowbird and spending summers in the north and then returning south for the winters. I am hoping that will happen someday.

I tend to like rainy days now and then. I love to read on such days and enjoy the mellow feeling it gives me. I also feel creative and write, as I am today on a cloudy day that promises rain later today. It seems easy to write when the weather is subdued and the sky is gray.

A balance in life is what we need in all areas of life. We need for ours lives to be in balance so we can be healthy and enjoy a long life. I have practiced a lifestyle for many years of attempting to be one in harmony with nature. I became a vegetarian over three years ago and feel it is a good fit for me. I also exercise daily, walking about five miles a day. That allows me to eat as I desire without gaining weight. I am comfortable with the weight I have and want to stay within five pounds of my ideal weight. So, I monitor my weight frequently and eat so as to lose weight if need be. I feel good about this balance of life and see it as natural as the rainfall and sunshine which nourishes our lives, our world, our spirits.

My wife and I recently went to New York City to celebrate our wedding anniversary. We had never done this and thought it would be great to see the largest city in the United States and the things we had always heard about. The city is still recovering from COVID so some things were not open to see. No shows on Broadway yet. The Statue of Liberty is closed for now. Ellis Island cannot be toured yet. But overall, we saw plenty to keep us busy.

We stayed in Astoria, an area of Queens, and rode the subway everywhere we wanted to go. We took a guided tour of Central Park on Saturday morning led by a woman who has lived in NYC for over 40 years. She took us to parts of the park we would never have seen before including wooded areas that many people do not know are part of it. We found the Arboretum in the northeast section where a wedding was taking place beneath an arch of flowers. Nearby was another arch with wisteria draping down, said to be the hiding place of many raccoons now and then.

After some lunch, we rode the subway to Chinatown to begin another guided tour of Chinatown and Little Italy. It was led by a great young man who is a descendant of immigrants who settled NYC and he grew up not too far from where the tour happened. Our group was composed of a young African-American woman with an African given name, a young man from India who works in southern California, a young Asian woman from Georgia, a young Latino couple from Miami, and my wife and me. As we toured that very interesting historical area, I began to think about how our tour group represented the immigration story we were learning about. Every one in the group represented immigrants who came to the US and whose legacy we lived out each day. Here were 8 strangers who had not known one another before meeting that day and we all had a story to tell that would enrich the total story of America.

New York itself is a melting pot of cultures. Astoria where we stayed had a Greek bakery a block from the apartment where we stayed and a Greek market 5 blocks away. There is a Thai restaurant beside one owned by immigrants from Bosnia. Italians have many shops in the area. It was wonderful to walk down the street and hear people speaking languages that are not English. What a rich, diverse culture is NYC and its various boroughs are filled with a rich sampling of the world’s peoples.

I cannot understand people who have a narrow viewpoint toward culture. They want everyone to blend together. They want everyone to speak English. They want some form of homogenization that would erase the distinctions that makes us individuals. They forget that the American story is a story of immigrants. Everyone except Native Americans came to the shores of the US from somewhere else. We are a story of diversity and it should be celebrated.

My ancestors were mostly from the British Isles. I have a sampling of all of them in my genealogy. I was surprised to find I also have a bit of French and Swedish in there, according to Ancestry.com. I have traveled to some of their homelands and explored them so I could have a mental picture of what the land of my ancestors looks like today. I could never know what it looked like when they inhabited its’ shores. l wish I could have known them but learning about them and their cultures is the next best things.

I want to celebrate who we are. I want us all to be proud of who we are as individuals and as descendants of many peoples. I want our language and ethnicity and all that make us who we are to be proudly proclaimed. I don’t want us to be the same in every way. What a boring existence that would be! I want to hear others speak their native tongues and to hear stories about their lands and to visit those lands if I can. I want to be friends with all the world’s peoples and meet as many of them as I can. I want the voices of hatred to be silenced as we all strive to make friendship the rule of the day in all the world. I celebrate myself and sing myself, as Walt Whitman did himself, and I celebrate you too, all you are and everything that makes you the unique person you are. I want to eat your foods and hear your music and sing your songs. I want you to be my brother and sister and kindred and for us to find a unity that will bind us together as one people forever.

In one past posting I told you about my work as a tosser of earthworms as I walk on my walk around the neighborhood daily. When it has rained, often there will be earthworms who seem to have lost their way and are lying in the middle of the street waiting for a car to run over them and smash them. They could be a good meal for a bird but it seems birds are not picking them up before their demise. So, I have taken it upon myself to pick them up and fling them onto the grass of the lawn nearest to where I am. That way they get a second chance at life and they do their job of aerating the soil.

Some days there will be earthworms who have been partially run over. It is evident that a part of them has been smashed by a car and they are wriggling with what remains. I find it a bit too bloody to fling them so I overlook them. Sometimes the worms will be moving so slowly that I do not recognize that they are worms rather than sticks and I go by, only noting their worm-ness after I am too far to turn back and assist them. So, it is a quandary as to what to do, whether to take the time out of my walk to assist these struggling, half-dead worms and hard to identify ones or to go on my merry way, as I usually do.

I think that earthworms must view me a bit like humans view God. I have the power to give them life or death. I can raise them up out of their lowly existence and give them another chance at life if I wish to. I can look upon their sorry state and have pity and fling them into greener pastures so they can enjoy the lush green grass and feed on whatever they eat in their life as a worm. I can also look the other way and not do anything to help them. I can just pass by and let them be and let them struggle in their short sad lives as a worm. I could, if I were sadistic enough, choose to smash them all with my shoe as I went by and laugh aloud at my evil deeds, but that is not my nature. I want all creatures to live, even the ones that I am unsure why they exist, such as snakes, mosquitoes, gnats, and cockroaches.

Some people view God in such a way. There is even a prayer that compares humans to worms and asks God to have pity on our lowly estate. Some humans think that God is all powerful and can do anything God wants to do, and because of God’s superhuman abilities, God can choose to save some and damn some and get joy out of doing either. This belief is commonly called of predestination. Our good friend John Calvin is credited with thinking this belief up and spreading it among the masses who have followed him through the centuries. Today, most of his adherents of the faith traditions that follow his teachings have abandoned the idea of predestination. Even Presbyterians, whom think highly of Calvin and adhere to his book of confessions, consider predestination to be too far out there to continue to teach.

Except for one elderly lady whom I knew during my short stint as a interim pastor in a Presbyterian church. Soon after I arrived as pastor she called me on the phone and asked me directly if I believed in and taught predestination. I thought she was being funny at first, because I had never known a true believe in that doctrine personally in all my years. She was very serious though. She really believes in it and takes joy in thinking that God will save some and damn some and it is up to God whether or not you fall in either of those classifications. So, when I told her that I did not believe in it, she was shocked and she called me a most terrible name—“You are just an Arminian!” I was stunned that she would call me such a thing and then she went further to accuse me of being Wesleyan. So, I had to fess up and say I did believe in both strands of theology named in her accusations of me.

In case you are not familiar with Arminianism, then just know that it is the opposite of predestination, and John Wesley was one of the promoters of the idea so his name gets bantered around when people discuss it. This poor lady was so flustered because of my lack of believing in his prize doctrine and soon she left the church I pastored to find another that would allow her belief to flourish. She was not really missed by most people in that church because she tended to be a royal pain. She inflicted her beliefs on everyone she could and she was very arrogant and thought she was right all the time regardless of what anyone else thought.

Concepts of God remind me of the poem–Who Has Seen the Wind? You probably remember hearing it or learning it when you were in elementary school. It says, “Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor you, but when the trees bow down their heads, the wind is passing through.” Everyone can describe what the wind can do in positive or negative words but no one can actually see the wind and tell you what it looks like. The wind can be destructive and cause buildings to tumble and seas to roar. The wind can provide a gentle breeze to cool one on a hot summer day. The wind can rustle up the leaves in autumn to provide a moment that we will enjoy and remember.

God is like the wind. Even Jesus says so in John’s Gospel when Jesus writes about the Spirit coming and going as it will. The wind moves across the earth and does what it does regardless of what humans think of the wind. We can try to figure God out but we never will. We just to trust that God will care of us and love us through this life and will do what is best for us after we leave this life, whatever this is. I do not know the answer to what lies beyond this life and I try not to worry about it. I know that life is good and God is good and God will be with me in life, in death, in life beyond death. Even as I care for earthworms on my daily walk, God cares for humans. I cannot know how God cares for humans. I just believe God does.

Most of us who live in a rural area are familiar with the term “good ole boy”. It is a colloquialism from the past, mostly from country roots, that means that someone is okay, someone whom you can trust, and that if you need help he will help you and, in turn, you should help him if it is needed. Good ole boys can be good ole girls also but the term was originally applied to men, as it was part of a system that men used to help out one another in favor of others.

We may have come in contact with it when we applied for a job and did not get it but someone less qualified, perhaps with less experience or education than we have was hired. We may have experienced this system when someone cut us some slack when we didn’t deserve it, perhaps the police officer who did not give us a ticket because we seemed like a nice person or maybe he knew one of our friends or relatives as we conversed with him. We may have even been part of the system because we helped out a stranger simply because he impressed upon us that he was sincere and needed help.

There is nothing wrong with neighborliness. In fact, it is a principle of polite society. Friends and neighbors help one another and repay kindness for kindness. It is what makes a neighborhood a good place to live. We do this with all of our neighbors who live around us. One watches out cat when we are out of town. In turn, we share food we have prepared with others around us. Some gives us eggs when they have too many. It is a good system to be part of. It is a principle of having good relationships with others.

But when it is part of modern business and the way business is done, then the good ole boy system becomes rather stale and unproductive. We recently had an addition to our house done to improve its comfort and value. The addition took six months to complete and required a building permit from the city and several inspections as the building process happened. A city inspector was supposed to come around at each stage of the process and inspect the work. Sometimes, however, the contractor would notify the city that an inspection was needed and it was weeks before the inspector came. No notification from the city was given as to when the inspector would visit. If the inspector came and we were gone, they would leave a note saying that they could not inspect and we would have to reschedule. When I asked for them to call me when they were coming, they never did. Their lack of organization led to the building process taking much longer than it should have because the contractor could not move on to the next phase of building until the inspection was done.

When inspectors did come, it was always the same one of two persons who had been in this job for many years. The system worked for them because they had been doing this job for so long that the city officials thought they were the most competent for the job and others could not do it. Great job security, indeed. So, they could move at their own pace and take their time because they were in a position of power that no one else had. They could decide whose project would be inspected and who would not get a visit on any certain day. One had to just wait and hope they would come so that the building process could continue.

That is just one example of the Good Ole Boy system at work. I once applied for a job that I was well qualified to have. I had many years experience in the field and I had the required education to fulfill the job. The interviewer told me that this was true but the added, “I am afraid you are the wrong color and gender. We cannot hire you because we need more women and minorities.” I always regretted that I did not have a tape recorder at that interview. I thought a lawsuit could have been filed but indeed the system works that way. The interviewer should not have told me that it was so but he did state the obvious. Some people in American culture get jobs because of their color, race, gender, or other factor that they were born with. Others are overlooked because they do not fit into the mold needed on that particular day.

Is the Good Ole Boy system something that benefits society in general or is it a hindrance to progress? Does it cause some who are neglected or overlooked to have feelings of inferiority or to bear a grudge because of the way the system works?

I experienced age discrimination for the first time when I began to apply for jobs after I reached the age of 55. Even though I had many years of experience in my field and four college degrees, often I received a Dear John letter from the organization to which I applied telling me that I was very well qualified but they chose someone else for the job. I soon decided that retirement was on its way to happening rather than continue the stress of finding another job. Perhaps that was nudge I needed to convince me that it was time to enjoy a lifelong vacation rather than putting in hours in a job any longer.

The Good Ole Boy protects some and overlooks overs, sometimes even persecutes or harasses others. I am unsure if it is just a part of human nature or if it is unique to the American way of life. Does it exist in all countries or do others value persons for what they offer rather than by who they know? That is the mantra I was taught as I grew up. “It’s not what you know that counts. It’s who you know.” I think it is a truism that describes life in American culture whether we want to admit it or not.

Last night I watched a documentary on PBS about the life of the writer, Flannery O’Connor. I read a number of her writings while I was in graduate school. They are often macabre and a bit weird but they were written out of her experience as a woman and a Southerner. She had lived during the era when segregation was the rule of the day and she had learned to accept it and not try to change it. She did believe in rights for all persons but she had decided that she could live within the culture that excluded black persons from sharing equally in society. I do not agree with her thinking on those societal issues but do find her writings to be interesting from both a psychological and theological standpoint.

Ms. O’Connor wrote about the misfits of society and how they found correction from others in society because of the way society reacted to them. She was a devout Catholic and her writings were shaped by the beliefs that she had received as a child at the school and church she attended. Her thinking was ahead of her time in many ways but she lived in an era in which a woman could not speak out boldly because of the risk of being ostracized or persecuted. She wrote anyway using people she knew as the role models for characters in her stories. Her mother was one that she used in a story about immigrants from Poland who came to Georgia after WWII and began to help farm the land of some needy Southerners. They allowed them to settle on their land but when they began to be viewed as wanting to “take over” then a tractor was allowed to come lose and run over the father of the family killing him and ending their venture into society that seen as a threat to those already there. The mother in the story is described as hard hearted and critical and may have been based on O’Connor’s own mother.

In another story, a man whom she had a crush on and rejected her seemed to be role model for a traveling bible salesman who mistreats a woman whose leg prothesis he steals and leaves her stranded in the hayloft of a barn. O’Connor had such a crush on a man visiting from Denmark and she was devastated when he returned to his country and married someone else. She made his character the villain in the story although she denied it when the man wrote to her after reading her story.

I have been writing short stories for as long as I can remember and sometimes have used people from my life experiences as characters in the stories I have written. I have never been happy with them because they seem too matter of fact and a bit stilted perhaps because I have been trying to write the stories from an historical perspective using actual experiences that I have described rather than simply using the persons I know as characters in the stories and then allow the fiction to work with the character rather than the experience carry the story.

Flannery O’Connor may have used actual persons to be models for characters in stories but she allowed the stories to take twists and turns that those real persons would have never taken. She includes violence as part of the stories that she must have imagined the characters could have done even if the real person she based them on would have never done such things. She allowed the character to take on a life that went beyond the life of the real person she knew and then used their actions to make a point that needed to be made about the world around her.

I think I am going to try to do a similar thing in the writing that I am doing, allowing the people I have known in life to act in the stories but to go beyond anything they may have done in life. Even describing scenes that may be shocking to readers allows the writer to venture into areas that need depth without trying to be historic or realistic in nature. People may shape our thinking even if they did not actually venture into the depths of our imaginations. It is those ideas that bring about stories that can be salvific and grace filled for the writer if not for the reader.