For Esmé, her knights, and the Prince or Princess Raspberry-to-be: Part 3

Dear Esmé, ( Jaedin, Ethan, Preston, Greyson, and Massimo, too :-)

You arrived three days ago much to the delight of all of us! Now your brothers can marvel over the wonder of your tiny self , and your year-old cousin Massimo will appear as a giant next your tiny self... although he has not increased in size. :-) I am handing over your title with a slight alteration to his unseen but much awaited sibling, your cousin-in-waiting, for the duration.

But I slightly digress. :-) Auntie Amy does that. Sorry :-)

G'g'ma Ardie has had a long two weeks since I told you a story about her...we have worried, wondered, and witnessed to the great power of God's love, which you know right now as the strong arms of your mommy, daddy, grandparents and brothers. Being held as a child contains the essence of God's love, Safe, secure, embraced, marveled at. Someday you will learn interesting facts about how God made the world out of nothing ( some call that the Big Bang Theory) and caused plants to grow on barren lava fields on the mountains which came out of the water, and all of that. In the beginning, there was love, and in the end, there is love.

G'g'ma lets God hold her every minute of every day. She still prays for all of US, and talks to others about the love of the Lord. One lady who comes in to clean her room said she likes cleaning G'g'ma's room because she has such peace. :-)

One of your big cousins who also give really great hugs, Brett, has been home for the summer from college. He's getting ready to go back, and boxes and bags and bundles fill the garage and dining room ready to be packed. Remember the story of g'g'ma Ardie getting busted at college for playing baseball?

The year after that, she and her sisters went to another college near Chicago, called Wheaton. She and her twin shared a room so they didn't have to be with strangers in a strange place like most college kids do. Having a twin is handy that way, and also convenient when you need to write a paper and your sister goes to class for you that day, which sometimes happened at Wheaton College in those days. HA (One time when your g'g'pa came to pick up g'g'ma Ardie, her twin came downstairs first and g'g'pa Keith didn't know it wasn't his date. They had a lot of fun fooling people that way!)

Ardie Mitchell met Keith Bailor, your g'g'pa, at Wheaton College. Keith is  your grandpa Kirk's daddy.

G'g'pa Keith's daddy was a state trooper, just like your daddy, but in Michigan.

People called him Sergeant Bailor, just like your grandpa! He had three children, Yvonne, Keith, and Barbara, and they lived in this big two-story white house in a sweet little town called Blissfield, Michigan, while he was a state trooper.
Some friends of G'g'pa's told me stories about him, one which included him shooting himself in the foot. ( Side note: Esme, you may learn through out the years that shooting ourselves in the foot ended up being a family tradition, only with words and actions instead of guns. We're counting on you young ones to change that paradigm. :-) )
Yvonne and Keith and Barbara could walk to school every day, even in the snow, because it was two blocks down and one block over. There's a bank there now so you can't see where they sat in the classrooms, but if anyone ever tries to tell you that G'g'pa Keith walked uphill in the snow both ways to school as a boy, just look at them and blink. Twice. Ha

Blissfield has three bridges side by side, one over the River Raisin, which was named by French trappers who found grapes there ( raisin is French for grape, I know it IS confusing ) and two side-by-side over the train tracks, also crossing the river. Big huge farm fields stretch for miles and miles and miles, and you'll see big red barns looming up every now and then as you wind along the

country roads. Remember the drugstore soda fountain I mentioned last time? A real live on still operates in Blissfield, to this day, and when the farmers get done with their morning chores they still head into town and visit with the people in the drugstore and talk about their morning work and the old days, and then head back home. G'g'pa Keith used to go to the drugstore all the time after school, and visit with his friends.

Sergeant Bailor ( your g'g'g'pa) had an assignment in Blissfield until his son was in high school. They attended a United Brethren church on the other side of the block from the school, and their family life remained very strict with a policeman father and a United Brethren mother who was the choir director and also the pianist for the church services. They could NOT misbehave in church!!! HA
Oh, your g'g'g'ma could play so beautifully! When she played those  hymns you could almost hear the angels singing along with her as she stroked the keys and pumped the pedals on the piano. Her favorite hymn was " I Come to the Garden Alone". I can still hear her playing and singing to her own music flowing out of the piano.

"I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses,
and the Voice I hear falling on my ear,the Son of God discloses
and He walks with me, and He talks with Me
and He tells me I am His own,
and the joy we share as we tarry there...none other has ever known."

She probably got lonesome sometimes living in Michigan. Her mother and daddy and all nine of her brothers and sisters lived in Indiana and Ohio, and letters took a week to get to people back then. (The Internet and cell phones didn't get invented until your mommy and daddy were young.) Calling long distance on the telephone was too expensive  and only used in emergencies, so she wrote long letters home and waited for them to get written back, and in the meantime, the tall lady who loved bright red lipstick had three little children to raise, while G'g'g'pa drove a lot for his job.

She probably got a little sad sometimes, being by herself in a strange place.

But she pressed on, and before they moved to Hillsdale, Michigan, where G'g'pa would graduate from high school while working in a dairy after school to help the family, Keith got a summer job in Blissfield.

A merchant in town who ran a gas station and a freight business ( shipping things on trucks to other places) talked to Keith one day in the drugstore about helping out on the weekends. Everybody loved Keith! He was a football player and a really good Christian young man who had dreams of being a minister. He had bright blue eyes and a huge smile, and he worked hard at everything he did. The man hired him and ended up so please with  Keith that he let him run the gas station AND the freight business for the summer, while the man went on vacation with his family.

G'g'pa Keith was 16 years old.

Nearly three years later, in the fall of 1950,  Keith went off to college, like my Brett is again today. He went to Wheaton, where he helped pay for his college expenses by washing dishes in the school dining room every night.

G'g'ma Ardie and Arlene were already there, of course, and G'g'ma Ardie was one year ahead of him in school. Another boy had already had a crush on her and even asked her to marry him. (His name was Bill Bell, so if she had you would be Esme Bell instead of Esme Bailor, which sounds good but probably not as interesting as being a Bailor. HA)

Keith AND Ardie were each the class presidents for their graduating classes. He played football and basketball and baseball, and Ardie didn't get in trouble at Wheaton for playing sports -- because she majored in them and could play every day and get class credit!!

They got married after he graduated in 1954, and G'g'pa went to MORE college, called seminary, where he got ready to be the minister he always dreamed of. Ardie was ready, since she grew up being a minister's daughter. They lived in Pasadena, right around the corner from the street where the Rose Parade takes place ever year. On New Year's day they would get up, have their coffee and walk down to watch the parade!!!

After Keith graduated from Fuller Seminary, they moved to Riverside, Ca, where they launched a little high-school ministry called Young Life, and had a baby named Kirk, another one named Karen, and later on one named Amy ( that's me ) and another one named Alyson. While we grew up we heard so many stories about how kids would gather in people's homes instead of church, and play games and sing songs and hang out and hear about Jesus. Some of us went to Young Life club and Young Life camp when WE were teenagers!  Lots of kids heard about Jesus from  Keith, and lots of them will still tell you today that they loved him and will always be grateful to him for leading them to the Lord.

So see, Esme, and Jaedin and Ethan and Preston and Greyson and Massimo and the royal Raspberry-to-be, our family has long been held in the arms of Jesus. Safe, secure, loved, in the best hug ever.

Amen. So be it.

P.S. Love, Auntie Amy

For Esmé, the Princess Blueberry, and her Knights -- part 2

Dear Esme, Jaedin, Ethan, Preston, Greyson, Massimo, (and your little sib-to-be),

Great-Aunt Amy forgot to tell you another thing, which leads to another story. This will happen often.
I apologize in advance.

Your Grandpa Kirk liked to play baseball on the neighbor's flat lawn, since ours rolled downwards like a little hill, which doesn't make for a very good game of baseball. Even the neighbors' lawns were too small for boys and bats and front windows, though.  He also liked to play soccer, but mostly he and the neighborhood boys would walk down to our schoolyard on the weekends and get up a basketball game on the empty court.

Sometimes your Great-Grandma Ardie would join in. She had played basketball in college, and she rode her bike every morning and could keep up with those boys, in her forties. Even though I never liked to play, I would go to the school to watch and play by the trees. Your great-grandmother Ardie loves to exercise. Even today, while she has bad back pain, she texts me and tells me how she is keeping her legs strong. :-)

G'g'ma Ardie IS strong. Maybe it's because she was born a twin! On September 8, 1930, she and her twin sister, Arlene, were born. They were a surprise!! back then doctors and hospitals didn't have sonogram machines and could only guess if a mother would have twins or triplets.

Their daddy had a little church in Sterling, Kansas, where they were born. They lived in Kansas for a few years, and then moved to Grabill, Indiana. Ministers didn't make very much money back then. The church people gave them a house to live in called a parsonage ( parson is another word for minister), and paid him $5 a week. A week. The church people also brought baskets of eggs and vegetables and fruit to the young couple with the new twins. My mother ( G'g'ma Ardie) remembers that her father would have just five cents, a nickel, left at the end of each week, and every Saturday he would take the twins for a walk to the drugstore and buy each of them an ice cream cone for a treat. Two ice cream cones for one nickel!!!

BTW Drugstores weren't like CVS or Walgreens are now. A pharmacist, what they used to call a druggist mixed up medicines and pills for people and also sold other things like candy, gum, magazines and newspapers. A little bit like a gas station now, but without the gas pumps -- and  usually the drugstore had a soda fountain. No, it wasn't a big fountain with Sprite or Pepsi flowing out of it. :-) People could come in and sit at a long counter and have ice cream and root beer floats and other yummy treats.

Ardie and Arlene had a little sister, too, named Marilyn. They all got along pretty well but sometimes the girls got sideways. Once, a very young Ardie pounded on the window of the back door and a piece of glass cut her arm, and she stopped pounding. That scared them all!

editor's note 8/21/14  it was NOT G'g'ma's twin sister who locked the kitchen door on a recalcitrant sister, causing her to bang on the window and cut her hand, but G'g'ma Ardie, who vexed their mamma. Larene was washing the girls' hair, one at a time, in a basin. Little Ardie got squirrelly, and my high-strung Grandma pushed her out onto the back porch to chill out and regain some decorum, dressed only in an undershirt and skirt. Embarrassed, G'g'ma ( Ardie age five-ish) banged in the window, adding insult to injury to herself -- as well as her wounded pride. Tender-hearted Aunt Arlene has absolutely nothing to do with any of that. It was all Grandma. HA Auntie Amy heard the  story forty years ago, and lost a few details along the way. Correction posted.  Aunt Arlene, I so apologize for implicating you for your twin's misbehavior. 

They saved their pennies as they got a little older, and for Christmas one year the three of them walked to the drugstore by themselves. Children used to do that. They'd go to the store or the post office for their mothers and have all sorts of adventures along the way. Cities were smaller then, and stores and post offices and neighborhoods all fit together better than they do now. The girls wanted to buy a gift for their mother. They had about 43 cents. Someday, Esme, I hope you will see a blue china teapot on one of our stoves. The little girls bought that teapot for their mother with just those pennies! and it has been in the family all this time.

The girls used to take their lunches to school in little tin buckets with a cloth napkin over the top to keep them fresh. Lunches in those days didn't have Gogurt or Veggie Straws. They would each have a sandwich and a piece of fruit, and they could clean their hands and faces with the cloth napkin when they were done and take it home to be washed for the next day.

G'G'ma Ardie learned how to drive when she was thirteen years old, out on her uncle's farm, in a car called a Model T. If you look for old pictures of a Model T, you'll see they were on of the first automobiles built in America. and looked sort of like a  fairy tale carriage, except with an engine instead of horses.

They moved from Grabill, Indiana to Fort Wayne, Indiana, so their father could work at the Bible College. The sisters sang in church often, which made their parents very proud of them.

Girls had to behave like little ladies all the time in those days -- and weren't allow to play sports very much. They always had to wear dresses and stay neat and clean and ladylike. Your g'g'ma Ardie loved sports, though, and she and her sisters played softball and basketball on the weekends with their friends.She knew some girls who played on some of the teams in  All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. 

After she graduated from high school, she and Arlene attended Ft. Wayne Bible College where their father worked. Their mother taught second grade at an elementary school, and also ironed lots of clothes for people, for extra money,  in the evening time to help pay for the girls to go to school.

Nowadays we have clothes dryers that we put our wet washed clothes in, and they roll around and get dry and fluffy and then we put them away. Back then, clothes got washed on a big tub with a crank, called a wringer washer. Hot or cold water got poured into it with laundry soap, and then the crank had to be turned to make the clothes get swished around. Dirty soapy water got drained out, and more hot or cold water poured in, and then the crank swished all the soap out of the water. After the water ran clear, the clothes would go through a wringer, in between rollers, and ANOTHER crank got turned ( hard, to push those wet soggy clothes through the rollers )  to s q u e e z e all of the water out. Then the wet clean clothes had to be clothes-pinned to a clothes line to dry --outside in the summer, down in the basements in the winter.  G'G'ma Ardie said it would take her mother all day Monday to do the laundry, and they didn't have very many clothes.

So while they were in college their mother helped other people with their ironing, and they paid her  10 or 25 cents per item to get all of the wrinkles out of those clothesline-dried dresses and shirts and pants. She would sprinkle a little water on the clothes, which seems funny because they just got dry. I know. :-) The electric iron didn't make steam back then -- it just had a flat plate on the bottom that got really hot, so the water sprinkles made the steam and helped smooth out the wrinkles.

One day when the girls were in college they wanted to go outside in the nice spring air and play a game of softball. The college rules stated that all girls were to wear dresses at all times.

The young men were outside playing ball! Why couldn't they? on a pretty day, the pretty girls got tired of being ladylike, and decided to put on some jeans and blouses and go play, too. Halfway through their game, people from the Bible college stopped them and sent them home. The girls received three weeks on not being able to leave the campus except for church, for wearing blue jeans and playing softball.

G'G'ma Ardie finished college and taught PE, physical education, so she could wear shorts every day and play baseball whenever she wanted to. In 1958, she stopped teaching for a while because she had a baby. Your grandpa Kirk. :-)

Today she's going over to stay with your Great-Aunt Alyson and her family, because she's not feeling well, so I am thinking of her and all the stories she told me about growing up as a twin in the 'olden days'.
She and her sister Arlene will be 84 years old in September! I hope she gets to hold you and your cousin-to-be someday. She's pretty wonderful!

Love, Auntie Amy

For Esmé, the Princess Blueberry, and her Knights -- part 1

Dear Esmé, ( and Jaedin, Ethan, Preston, Greyson, and Massimo, the esteemed knights )

Soon you and your new cousin ( set to arrive a little after you ) will be born and the BailorTale will have a new chapter.

I am your great-aunt, your Grandpa's sister and your daddy's auntie. Like Auntie Holly, and Rachel, and Danielle. One day we will play together on the beach in heaven, I believe...but for now I want to tell you some stories about the people who gave you your last name. :-)You may never know your great-aunt Amy, or maybe I might get to see you when you are also four, as I was on that long-ago Christmas I remember.

A long time ago, I took a train with my parents, my brother, and HIS three sisters to our grandparents' house for Christmas, and we stopped at a great-aunt's home along the way. Icicles hung from the roof, and my great-aunt's Margaret's cheery living room gave warmth from that crystal cold night. That night, 44 years ago, your grandpa Kirk was  already twelve years old.

Grandpa Kirk arrived on May 31, 1958, in Riverside, Ca., in a little bungalow hospital in the shadow of Mt. Rubidoux. To this day, a huge concrete cross sits on top of that pretty little hillside, so you might say your grandpa has always been close to the cross. :-) He lived in two different little houses before he turned nine, close to each other, both surrounded by big palm trees that fluttered in the sunshine while he played outside in the yard. He burned his baby feet on the heater grate in the second house, in the night. Back then the furnaces blew really hot air through the air shafts under houses, and there were pretty iron grates covering the opening to let the hot air would rise up. Poor Kirk --his bare feet met with a red-hot shock in the middle of the night.

We didn't have neighbors across the street in the house we moved to when he was nine, the same beautiful house where your Great-grandma still lives.  Only a big brick wall with ivy growing on it. A little bridge crossed over it so we could walk to our elementary school on a street across the canal. When he was a little boy he liked to play cowboys and Indians, and had toy guns and a cowboy hat. He also had lizards and snakes, in little glass cages in the garage, and sometimes he would let me help feed them wiggly worms out of a little cup full of sawdust and wiggly worms.

As he got older he liked to put together models of race cars and rocket ships. One time, he had left his model project on his desk in his room.

I loved that desk with a big surface as big as a table, and a writing board that slid out from a secret slot, and big, deep drawers. We passed it down to each other as the years went by, and it was already 60 years old! G'Grandma still has it at her home. Maybe someday you can play under it, like my sisters and I used to.

Anyway, Kirk left out a little jar of turpentine, which he used to clean the paint brushes used on his models,  in a small glass. Always curious, I sniffed at it and maybe put my mouth to it to see what it tasted like. Either your future grandpa discovered me in his hallowed space, and called for help, or someone else did, but the story is that they rushed me to the hospital to get my stomach pumped. Hopefully your brothers won't leave out anything dangerous for your curious self to discover. Blech. Turpentine. Like nail polish but so much worse.

When your Grandpa got older, he had a paper route. Back in those days, the paper got printed two times a day. Teenage boys and some girls had paper routes in their neighborhood. They would ride their bikes early in the morning or after school, roll up lots of newspapers in rubber bands, and then ride through the neighborhood to which they were assigned and throw them on the steps, like people do now from truck in the night. We didn't have the internet back then, or cable television or satellite dishes or anything like that. The news reports aired in the morning and afternoon too, and once more late at night. If you stayed up too late with a stomachache or the chicken pox, there was nothing to watch on television after midnight. the TV went fuzzy until the morning time, and we didn't have DVDs back then. We watched movies at the theater, or on Saturdays on television. But most of our news and advertisements were in the newspaper.

He loved to go backpacking in those days.  Loved the trees and the lakes and the mountain views, and time spent with his friends among the beautiful trails and evening campfires. He had a big green backpack that sat in the corner of the garage waiting for summer to roll around, next to his old baseball bats and fishing poles.

Your grandpa was the oldest cousin, so when he graduated from Riverside Poly High School in 1976, on Victoria Avenue where all the orange groves grew,  lots of  the relatives from came to Riverside to celebrate. We had a pool, so we spent lots of time out there. We also went to Knott's Berry Farm, which only had three big rides and a little Western town back then -- but we still had lots of fun together that season. That summer was the Bicentennial, America's 200th birthday. Lots of big parties and celebration went on that summer. Turning 200 is a pretty big deal! That summer, and every summer before and afterwards, they set off fireworks from the top of the mountain with the Cross. The fireworks would light up the Cross for seconds at a time with bright colors...and then the falling sparks would land in the dry brush below and little fires would burn all over the hillside. Sometimes BIG fires, so the firefighters were waiting on the roads to quickly put them out.

Not long after that, your future Grandpa Kirk moved into a little apartment by the big hill where our house sat along a canal(which watered the orange groves farther away). They didn't do fireworks on our hill, so we never worried about fire much, and we didn't have neighbors across the street. Just a big brick wall with ivy growing on it. A little bridge crossed over the canal, so we could walk to our elementary school on a street across the canal and down the next block.  In the springtime you could go outside and the whole city smelled sweetly of orange blossoms. ( One time, before he graduated, he and your great-aunt Karen babysat me and your great-aunt Alyson while our parents went out for dinner. The house at the end of the block sat up higher than the rest, and you could see over the top of the wall along the canal. That day my brother and sisters helped me and Alyson over the wall and we "played in the creek". We didn't ever get to do that, so we had so much fun -- until our parents found out. :( We spent a lot of time in our rooms for a while, after that.)

Train tracks run alongside our big hill. All during the day and at night the train whistle would blow as it came along, warning to clear the track in the little canyon. It must have been a little rumbly and shaky in his new apartment, but he didn't seem to spend much time there. Every time I went over to his apartment, he only had Ritz crackers in the cupboard. HA

 I always felt special when he would  to come to my church youth group and play his guitar for us, while we sang songs. All of my girlfriends had a big crush on my brother, and all the young boys were jealous.  HA

Your grandpa learned how to operate a backhoe, which is a big tractor with a big scoop and a deep bucket for digging lots of dirt. ( I forgot to tell you that we had a two-story playhouse with a sandbox underneath it, and when he was little he had a toy backhoe and lots of other big toy trucks he liked to play with in the sand. When he grew up, he did the same thing in real life.)

Later on he moved up to what we call The Valley. Our other grandparents lived there and our aunt Yvonne and Uncle Dale and our cousins. We went there for Christmas a few times too. Aunt Yvonne and Uncle Dale had a yearly contest of who could make the best Christmas candy, so their kitchen table overflowed with fudge and divinity fudge ( white fluffy goodness ) and other tins of delectable goodies. They had a big garden too, and grapevines, and a German Shepherd named Princess. Uncle Dale was a truck driver for a moving company, and always had a gazillion Girl Scout cookies in the big freezer in the garage which the cookie company gave to his company for delivering the cookies to the Girl Scouts.

Aunt Yvonne was my daddy's big sister. She had a big happy laugh and loved to tell stories about our family. Their other sister Aunt Barbara lived far away in beautiful Michigan, so we didn't see her so much. She had a big happy laugh too. I will tell you more about them in another story.

Kirk loved the valley. Big oak trees and rolling hill and wide open spaces where Uncle Dale and he and cousin David could ride their motorcycles. Sometimes they took me with them and we'd seem to be gone all day roaring along endless roads through the green and gold Santa Ynez hills.

That's where your grandpa met your grandma Christi, and suddenly, after a long time of seeming sort of sad, he was happy. I will tell you more about that next time too.

love,

Auntie Amy

Feelings...♪whoa whoa whoa...♪feelings...

.

"Feelings...whoa whoa whoa...feelings..."
Young ones, Google it for that reference. Or take an elevator, anywhere. It will pop up eventually.

Feelings. Our very soul consists of them, invisible, powerful, ephemeral. The soul lies housed in the body, which creates endorphins, or enhances toxins, depending on how the soul disseminates the environment shaping the emotions. 
Your heart races at the sight of your lover, or it pounds at the sight of a nemesis. 
You can spring up in joy after winning the championship game!! or sink down to the depths at the death of a loved or respected one. 
Our body and soul literally function at the whim of our emotions.
Yet, from the time we can sit up, we begin receiving stern admonition to suppress, appropriately express, not regress to, and only address in private the very unseen mechanism that fuels our existence. 

Feelings house our memories, guide our decisions, shape our judgments.

As a society, we have no idea how to manage this mechanism emanating from others, save for social mores and norms. It varies with the generations. Kingdoms won and lost over a disagreement. Dynasties ruled by indifferent rulers, following a strict code. Puritanical views on emotion and sin shaped this country. " BE strong. " " Don't let the devil get you down." 'Idle hands make devil's work" In other words exhaust yourself to keep from thinking about how you feel.

A generation ago, we still taught our children to contain themselves, at least in public. Now public has lost all boundaries, and everyone, everywhere, has the right to free speech on social media. True. Awkward, but true. We communicate a thousand more times a day than folks did one forty years ago, and so our feelings receive a thousand times more speculation and assessment, causing us to doubt who we are and what we believe. 

Therein lies the dilemma.

Fervent emotions and passions have zero tolerance in "the real world" of business and commerce.( Unless, of course, you loathe your competition and pour your energy into either dismantling or surpassing his kingdom. At that point you have wielded passion into a profit margin and achieved the American dream by nefarious means, as opposed to the long-suffering way of planting and waiting for harvest. Either way takes passion.)

Emotions, generally perceived as weakness, don't get tolerated so much in the great big bouncy world of organized religion either -- unless it's the divine ecstasy of revelation, singing praise at the top of your lungs, or joyful tears in the richness of blessing. 
Crying in worship, sharing doubts, showing anger tends to be sshhhed! in the hallowed halls of the great sanctuaries. "Not here! This IS THE HOUSE OF THE LORD. No one wants to see you crying. God Loves you, honey! Cheer up! . < hmmm...I thought He loved me as I am??>

Every mainline church, and several rogues, should post a huge sign with this at the top

Only Happiness and Holiness Allowed
( experience not needed, will train )



Not to say we should share our life story at length, in church or elsewhere, but we do not exist in a vacuum. 

Our essence, who we are, lies in those very emotions. We sentient beings have that inherited right, as it gave us courage in the Neanderthal days to survive. 

We remain hard-wired to feel, not behave serenely in the face of distress. Even Queen Elizabeth, a lifelong model of stoic decorum, did not sip tea and sit princess-like, gazing demurely out the palace window as the bombs fell on London -- she raced through the streets of her bombed out nation retrieving soldiers as an ambulance driver. 

We certainly have social and civil requirements in interacting with others, addressing issues, sidestepping toxic waste -- and a certain self-responsibility in avoiding self-toxicity. 

Nothing hurts a loved one more than to hear their beloved loathing themselves. However, experiencing pain is not " from the Devil". Dispensing it, maybe. ( Don't want to give negative forces any credit, so let's get back to the so-called "sin" of emotion).

The Bible says we are created in God's image. Right there in the first few pages of Genesis, chapter 1, verse 27. The rest of the Bible references a God who floods the earth, sends meteors to destroy the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, lets His people wander in the desert for 40 years, slays a vast civilization with plagues, and then changes His mind to offer redemption. Sounds like every dynasty, kingdom, or corporation, ever...minus the redemption clause.

" We are made in the image of God." Seems we have been indoctrinated, over the centuries by the early Church ( formed in secrecy under oppressive governance), to believe/know that God is a remote judge who will hypocritically sent eye us to the depths of hell us for a) not attaining sainthood and b) by possessing the same emotions which we inherited from Him.
Indoctrinated to believe that emotion does not dovetail with devotion. Indoctrinated to believe that the same Creator who spent eons painting the universe in exquisite detail would condemn us for being the very creation formed in His hands. Indoctrinated to believe that an ancient "headstrong woman" condemned all women to pain and to bear the curse of humanity. Indoctrinated to believe that other people, who existed on earth at that same time, were somehow out of the realm of His creation -- not to mention the dinosaurs -- and that all of the angst of humanity hinged on one "sin" of eating a forbidden fruit. God is love. Absolute love. Love forgives, sees past mistakes, stills the waters.

Surely there has to be more to the story. Surely the tribal nomads who passed along the Judeo-Christian chronicles around the fires of their kinsman could have left out a f e w things over the years. Surely the coming of Messiah did not mean the end of passion. Surely it meant the onset of it. .

We possess intuition and perception for a reason -- not extraneously or something to be feared, like some emotional appendix buried deep within our gut, out of sight out of mind. Certainly not suppressed, simply because we have chosen to believe in God. The true meaning of salvation does not equal excision of emotion. 

It means celebration of it -- eternally! Beware of suppressing the authentic you. Everyone knows what happens if you ignore an inflamed appendix...

...so allow feelings into your heart, but don't let them build up. Bottlled emotions muddle the mind. Panicked minds shut down the frontal lobe, which in turn lead to attack mode at perceived enemies. Remember, our cache of emotions did not come equipped with an arsenal, so making prison shanks out of the ones you possess also has zero tolerance. Not cool. If you are in prison of any sort, it is by your own hand. Don't stab the ones who come to visit.

Abundantly allow feelings into your mind, combining them with the facts at hand to make informed decisions.Great theologians, especially the ones with the big auditoriums on television, will tell you that your feelings gain strength from the devil "whispering in your ear", and so you should " ignore your feelings... clear your mind... so you can hear God and God alone." Not bad advice. However...

...if the devil is close enough to you to whisper, you have more problems than your emotions.

God gave you those feelings. You inherited them from Him. Don't deny your inheritance by ascribing to "church face theology" in which no negativity is allowed. God had, and has plenty of negative emotions. Anger, sorrow, jealousy, remorse. He also abounds in joy, which counteracts all of those. You are a unique creation, and your emotions make up your spirit. 

That spirit DOES lead the flow of your thoughts, yes, so examine your negative feelings as though you would a splinter -- or more serious injury. Evaluate what need to be done to heal the wound, and give it the air and time it needs.


Let not others tape down unnecessary bandages which keep it festering, simply so your pain is out of their sight. Feeling sad, angry, jealous and vengeful is in your DNA. So also joy, excitement, charitable and gracious. Day-to-day emotions ebb and flow like the tide. All were given for a purpose, to help us learn of the wonderful creation that is us.


Be real. Do no harm, but be real. It's your divine inheritance, and also the crux of one of the greatest emotion of them all. Love.

♪ The Church is Not a Building, The Church Is Not A Steeple ♪

...The church is NOT a resting place...the church is people.

Three weeks ago I met up with some longtime friends ( we are actually old HA but young at heart, so...) at Starbucks. On Palm Sunday.

I had never missed a Palm Sunday church service in my life, until last year. Even the year prior, when my long-suffering eldest awaited a surgery that would either heal or end his life, we went to Palm Sunday, and then spent Easter in the ICU post-surgery.

That was the day I stopped going to church in my heart, because no one came to see us. No one. Church was more important to our friends and our pastors than the reasons they recite in the pews every Sunday.

I studied the Church for an entire year after that, ever my father's daughter in the quest for knowledge and basis in fact.

Once upon a time Easter was celebrated every Sunday. In fact the Catholics still celebrate Easter every time they take the Eucharist, one of the many ancient traditions perpetuated, along with many others, documented over the decades,  that we will not revisit here.

Used to be that folks celebrated by prayer and petition to be worthy of the Easter story weekly, giving cause  during the week to behave themselves accordingly OR confess their sins to such if not, just in case The Rapture happened whilst they were elsewhere than the sanctuary.

It was NOT the Once-A-Year-Eggstravaganza following a month-long Lenten Gloom-to-The-Tomb. The season when so many Protestant pastors work themselves into a frenzy vying for the market share of once-a-year parishioners with The Best Easter Sermon/Power Point/Praise Band Ever in the History of Mankind. The season after the dead of winter has passed,  when everyone who didn't get zapped for their year's transgressions sobs on Maundy Thursday in penance. The season to celebrate by dressing up and dropping inordinate amounts of money into the Easter Sunday offering plates in gratitude.

The Church became a business, after the Apostles were all martyred and couldn't stop them. The apostolic church, founded on spreading the Good News, cornered the market on guilt and demanding dollars for dispensations somewhere in the 4th or 5th century. Martin Luther nailing 500 theses against this practice 1,000 years later has not lessened the rush to fill the pews, be the best, show those (take your pick) Catholics Methodists Baptists Lutherans Presbyterians how to "reach the unchurched with love and grace and the good news of Christ.". Often, not always, code for, " raise more revenue to keep our building up and running."

Three weeks ago, we discussed all of this at Starbucks, which is not a church, although folks do bow to the goddess of caffeine there quite frequently. We discussed real love, real sacrifice, real forgiveness, most of which goes on outside of the church, which makes perfect sense.

No business model includes love, forgiveness, and sacrifice. Business models, according to MIT students  Weill, Malone,  D’Urso,  Herman, and Woerner in 2004, fall into these categories:
"(Creators, Distributors, Landlords and Brokers). Next, by considering the type of asset involved (Financial, Physical, Intangible, or Human), 16 specialized variations of the four basic business models are defined."

Which one does your church fall into? Hopefully none...but so many sadly do.

My granddad, born 109 years ago today, never had a big congregation ( probably much to the chagrin of my socially-driven and formerly wealthy grandmother). He pastored little tiny churches across the Midwest and in Colorado, tending to one small flock at a time, with his soft-spoken, sincere, level-headed wisdom which he sought from the worn Bible in his hand. His father had been a blacksmith. His mother, a bright-eyed wisp of a thing, quiet like her son, big-hearted, and faithful.

No mega church. No radio hour, no book signings, no gift store/coffee bar just across from the sanctuary. No 20,000 seat auditorium, no congregation tied to a General Assembly, General Conference, Presiding Bishop, none of that.

Just a quiet, heartfelt, never in your face ministry that touched countless lives, mine included, over 60 years.

I would love to go back to church. I don't know how. I am neither a huge financial contributor, nor am I needy. I don't ascribe to any dogma, and they all have it. I don't need to be nurtured, comforted, or surrounded by people who love me. I have that in my life. I'm sure I could learn so much more about God if I went back, but I'm also sure that what I would hear might, j u s t might be slanted politically or denominationally ( which go hand in hand these days).

I felt more spiritually nurtured by the non-church fellowship at Starbucks than I have in a long time. Like a kid at summer camp, away from tradition but still hearing the Good News.

The world needs more men like my granddad, who did not seek glory, did not force his faith on others, but simply lived to share it. The world needs more fellowship unfettered by denomination and the expectations assigned to each one.

The world needs Jesus. Not the Sunday School Jesus, or the Jesus Christ Superstar Jesus, but the Jesus who came to be born, live and die here, who never flipped the switch and struck up the band to get the show started. Instead He went quietly into the darkness.

The world needs Jesus.

Nelson, Ollie, and Jesus, Convicts All

I can almost hear the gasps (on FB and the HIDE button being slammed) as "people of faith" read this headline. JESUS WAS NOT A CONVICT!! HOW DARE YOU BLASPHEME THE SAVIOR???!!!

I'll get back to that...if you'll keep reading.


Recently I have been privy to a gathering of strangers singing together in public, not once but twice. No patriotic song at a sporting event, or hymns at a church service, but spontaneous choral singing of common melodies dear to our hearts for one silly reason or another.

While taking in the splendiferous "Saving Mr. Banks", the audience around me joined in unbidden to sing "Let's Go Fly A Kite", as actors portraying the brilliant Sherman brothers rolled out the finale for P.L Travers to consider.

A few short holidays later, the chatty crowd at the New Year's Eve celebration burst in to song nearly every time a new tune poured out of the sound system. Those who didn't know all the lyrics ( like me ) joined in heartily to swell the chorus.

We sing...we like to sing the same tune as those around us, for the most part, if the majority carries the melody. It gives us a sense of belonging, camaraderie, kinship even.

Humans tend to think collectively.

Primitively hardwired to unite against common enemies, we've banded together over millennia to combat saber-toothed tigers, dragons ( real ones -- check Job 41 or Google "Dragons in the Bible" ), opposing kingdoms, Huguenots or Catholics, Redcoats or Colonists,  Yankees or Rebs, Nazis or Allies, Communists or Capitalists ( again, depending on geography ), etc. etc.

We sing together or fight together depending on who and what we're listening to. With the exception of defending hearth and home against non-human creatures, every epic battle commences with a rallying cry for or against an idea, an idea or full ideology that an opponent espouses or rejects.

In our very recent history... Nelson Mandela, a statesman who brought his nation out of apartheid after serving nearly 30 years in prison, passed away and a global contingent of statesmen and women turned out at his funeral to laud his life accomplishments. Time tends to rewrite the script...because Margaret Thatcher referred to Nelson Mandela as a terrorist, and, in fact, he remained on the U.S. terrorism watch list until 2008, when then-President George W. Bush removed him from it. 

This past October Lt. Col. Oliver North visited the bookstore where I spend my days, doling out caffeinated beverages to a global cross-section in our university/military town. About the same time that PM Thatcher dismissed the African National Congress and "Mandiba" as typical terrorists, National Security Council Dep. Director "Ollie" North covered his backside by shredding documents and claiming the inability to recall facts when questioned about the Iran-Contra scandal. He was convicted and sentenced. Yet, over the last thirty years he has also become a national hero to many who honor his service to his country, despite his failings in the Iran-Contra affair. A New York Times best-selling author, once a criminal, now a hero.

Ollie North is no Nelson Mandela. They share the common passion of loyalty to their fellow countrymen, to the point of sacrifice. 

Back to Jesus of Nazareth. 

In our sanitized, Prosperity Gospel, Buddy Jesus culture, we have forgotten that Jesus of Nazareth served a three-day sentence, and was indeed a convict. Arrested, imprisoned, albeit briefly, and convicted of His alleged crimes. A conviction resulting in a crucifixion, the mort-du-jour of the Roman Empire.

We have forgotten that a deity deemed mere mortals precious enough to live among us, as one of us.

A deity who could have descended on a cloud of glory, ten thousand angels as His command, laying waste to anything unfit and establishing a kingdom on earth. Instead, He lived a quiet life building furniture in a Galilean town filled with fisherman and other lowly residents, in the shadow of Herod's palace, until His words and actions landed Him in Big Trouble. Did He defend Himself? No.

He served out His brief sentence leading to death, in silence. For His loved ones.

The very human Jesus broke Talmudic law any number of times, to include picking grain on the Sabbath, traveling with women, touching the unclean. (To date, there remain 39 edicts regarding Shabbat, alone, to include not using scissors, baking, and writing or erasing two or more letters. I'm breaking that law a dozen times over typing this blog on the Sabbath. That's 39. Just for the Sabbath.) There are a gazillion others, including the type of fabrics one might wear, the attendance by fertile women to a mikva/bathing facility to become COMPLETELY clean, separate utensils. Etc.

Later on, more men wrote the myriad number of Catholic edicts on Holiness (and Hell If You Don't Follow Them), and the Protestants followed suit substituting grace and peace for such strict discipleship. Ad nauseum.
God did not write those 'laws'. Men did. God only handed out 10, setting a course for civility and honor among His people.

The rebel Rabbi Jesus' ultimate arrest did not end in a conviction for those particular crimes against the Sanhedrin edicts -- yet the Pharisees pushed for the local governor to convict and execute Him as He threatened their well-established religious hierarchy and tradition. They whipped the mobs into a frenzy encouraging Pilate to "Crucify!!". He was indeed, a criminal in his society. They got the people to sing a common song...and some of them didn't even know the lyrics, or why they sang. They joined in the chorus, as we often do, aligning ourselves with people we respect.




It took thirty years for Mandela to be revered and remembered as a great hero, a wide shift from his 'terrorist leanings'. It took thirty years for Ollie North to evolve into a hero instead of a evil conspirator.

Both of them paid for their present hero-status. Jesus paid with His life.

In the thirty years since graduating from high school, while socio-political paradigms shifted, I've observed Jesus of Nazareth, believed to be the Son of God, reduced to:
  a character on Saturday Night Live;  a preferred baby Jesus, prayed to by an irreverent ass in a movie; twice-a-year spectacular glories at Christmas and Easter; a cartoon figure on Facebook;
a bobble-head doll in retail stores;  a Sunday morning/Wednesday evening/faith retreat Warm Fuzzy Addictive Fix to get us through the Evil Secular World Until We Get To Heaven and The Heathens Go To Hell.

The very common carpenter-turned-criminal, who inspired the verse, " greater love has no man than he who lays down his life for a friend"  has often been reduced by popular culture to the same ranks as Mandela or North.

A news story of a fallen hero. A "celebrity sighting" at a church or Christian concert. My Buddy Hero Jesus, with ten million Likes on FB.

What other religion has reduced their god to such humble esteem, even if he did arrive and live humbly? Only our comfy, cushy, American Christianity.

He was a man. And a Messiah, who saved people. Not by magically redecorating the world into fileds of flowers and butterflies, but by performing simple acts of kindness... and to those who believe, One who will save them from eternal death.

A simple man, embodying God, who preached love, healed the sick, ate with sinners, turned over money-grubbing stalls in the Temple, giving up His life for a singular purpose -- fulfilling 414 Old Testament prophecies to the letter. He lived, ate breathed, broke the law like we do -- speeding and such.

A simple man who loved in an unknown manner. Unconditionally. No 39 Rules for the Sabbath.

10 Commandments to honor and respect God and others, and one invitation.

Just... "believe in Me".

That common carpenter-turned criminal remains the singularly most studied figure of all time. Whether you believe Him to be Messiah or not, He's worth getting to know.

What have you got to lose? In thirty years, you might think differently about Him, too. :-)

The Spirit of '76 Hallowe'en

Halloween, 1976...

Unfamiliar curls in my stick-straight hair bobbing, with my little sister Alyson and a few other younglings keeping up with my hasty pace, the gypsy-to-be in me skipped/raced for once to Mrs. Hayward's b o r i n g 6th grade classroom. The great granite boulders of the hillside looked coolly down upon us, and the palm trees waved us along in the fresh autumn air. Gripping paper sacks with our costumes in our sweaty hands, we raced over the train bridge, and two long blocks down, joined up at the corner of Jurupa and Riverside Ave with dozens of other paper-sack grippers en route to school.

Our feet crunched the bushels of fallen pods, along Briscoe Street, under the canopy of pod-laden Limburger cheese-scented carob trees while the sacks' contents met with approval or disapproval amongst the walkers.

The morning dragged on inexorably through a bog of spelling lessons, math drills, and chapter readings.

Bursting forth from all exits for lunch and our longest recess like a flock of sparrows, we kids tittered and chirped during foursquare, tether-ball, and on the big concrete pipe under the pepper tree in anticipation of the parade. The teachers in our modular class block headed for their lunch break in varying stages. Mrs. Sompayrac snuck off to the gate by the parking lot to grab a quick smoke with Mrs. Ryno during the exodus, Mr. Stephenson popped his head into Mr McGoon's to tell a bad joke, and Mrs. Hayward and Mrs. Bates ambled slowly to the teacher's lounge in weary anticipation of the 33rd Halloween Parade of their teaching careers. At that same school, no doubt.

It took approximately 128 hours in kid-time for them to return, after the bell rang, as we all lined up in boys' and girls' lines at each door, poking each other and engaging in general grade-school stupidity.

 Finally, finally, the gaggle of upper grade teachers were spotted -- walking as though to execution down the long covered sidewalk from the office, past the library doors, and disbanding reluctantly with great jangles of keys in hand to their respective doors.

It took approximately 5.3 seconds for every kid in the upper grade block to bust out their own paper sack, as soon as the word was given, and costume up.

My unfamiliar curls had somehow miraculously lasted through the day, thanks to copious amounts of Dippity-Do and my mother's Final Net hairspray lacquering them in place. My colorful skirt (snagged from my older sister Karen's closet), her hand-me-down white fluffy peasant blouse, strands of my mother's costume jewelry, and a big colorful scarf holding back my curls greeted me as I checked my gypsy-image in the wavy mirror over our classroom sink. I'd been given some old mascara, for the occasion, from Karen, and my lashes darkened ever so magically in that fluorescent light. Transformation not yet complete, I held a tiny sample tube of bright-red lipstick from the Avon Lady's most recent visit with my mother. As I applied it I thought of my mother and every Avon Lady in my childhood looking at lipsticks, over cups of fragrant tea.

The girl in the mirror became suddenly beautiful. The awkward sturdy girl with a giant forehead and big shoulders and big teeth disappeared into a vision of gypsy loveliness. Blonde curls bobbing, red lips smiling, the for-once-in-my-life-pretty-as-BeckyBottel-in-the-class-next-door beautiful. My gypsy feet floating, I  paraded out with the class for the school festivities.

From the sidelines, as the Oldest Kids in School, we 6th graders had to fawn over the kindergartners, which were too cute, the first graders -- among whom my sister dressed-as-a-fairy-Alyson numbered -- and then the rest of the young ones, until it was our turn to stroll along in the last Halloween Parade of our Official Childhood. We strutted and sauntered through the halls, at the lofty ages of eleven and twelve, owning the moment. Having skipped kindergarten, I was ten, yet still sauntered in my gypsy-euphoria as though I were as old as my peers.

The euphoria lasted through the evening, at least for me, when my dad let me go with a gaggle of my older peers, on our own to trick-or-treat, way down on Sunnyside. He had escorted me with Alyson on our own cul-de-sac and up on Pachappa Drive, skipping Dr. Kushell the Dentist who gave us apples and lectures on good dental hygiene. ( You'd think he'd be happy in the rise of business after such an event...) We had to solemnly swear to stay in the horseshoe ( a great curving of streets leading back to the walkway, which led to OURS) and then we were off. Margaret Kish, aka the Wicked Witch of the West and Jeff Cassidy,  dressed as Einstein of course with that shaggy hair, and a few others raced down the seriously scary-at-night walkway which gave passage from the canal bridge on our street to the neighborhood below.

Between two fence lines spanning the length of  back yard/house/front yard, we held our breath and thundered through the inky darkness expecting to be murdered any second by Unseen Forces Behind the Slats.

Emerging unscathed, with pillow cases in hand,
we plundered every trick-or-treat bowl offered along the way.
Both sides of the 1950's-built neighborhood of comfortable one-story homes witnessed our journey, including hitting the two houses on the short segment exiting to busy Riverside Ave. Briefly considering doorbell opportunities along the homes half way up the block on the Forbidden Outer Street, we turned inwards, back into "the horseshoe" as promised, to pinball back and forth up Mono Drive and out onto the OTHER side of Sunnyside, right by the gate to our old playground of our former school. Now home to what were then-labeled TMR students
(trainable mentally retarded), we glanced over, momentarily saddened at the locked gate to OUR PLAYGROUND.
 Short-lived reminiscing gave way to Our Mission.
We soon cheered up as we made the final dashes back and forth towards home.

Once again surviving the seriously scary walkway, Jeff promising to get Margaret safe to her house as the bottom of his seriously scary hillside driveway, I ran down my now-empty street.

Was it midnight? How long had we been out there??? Creepy noises creaked from behind the cypress trees at the corner house. I scrambled past our next door neighbors' house because they freaked me out during daylight, charged through our front door armed with my loot, and safely shut it behind me.

Sitting under the billowing hood of my mother's beauty-case hair dryer like a mouse under a mushroom, Alyson looked at my pillowcase containing unknown treasures. Her big brown eyes bugged out.  She had already sorted out her candy, put away her fairy costume, and taken her shower. The antiqued-olive green kitchen clock read 8:15!! I had never been out that late on a school night! Without parents!!

I snuck her a few fun-size Milky Ways to enjoy while her hair dried, stashed some others  in the folds of my gypsy skirt to stash in my room -- then dumped the rest into the big wooden bowl for my mom to inspect, my dad to plunder, and for me to pretend to limit myself to two pieces a day until consumed.

Halloween, 1976. ♪ Those were the days...♪