Getting Here Part IX: Atheism Has No Holy Days

There are those who call the 'Sixties the Decade of Love and Peace. But exactly when was that? It really wasn't the 'Sixties, not 1960 through 1969 anyway. Do you mark the beginning when the Beatles arrived in 1964? Or did it begin in 1967 at Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love? Psychedelic Art became popular in 1966 along with the Nehru Jacket, was that the beginning? The Hippie-look was everywhere by 1968, but many would count Woodstock as the apogee, not the beginning. If someone asked me to put borders on that period I would say it was from November 22, 1963 to April 30, 1975, the assassination of President Kennedy to the fall of Saigon.

Odd choice some may say, but those events pretty much framed the period because what was so peaceful and loving during that decade?

 There were fiery riots in cities across the nation. There were dogs let loose on people who just wanted to sit down at a lunch counter. Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F. Kennedy were all gunned down. The Vietnam War raged through all those years, with the disgrace of My Lai and the chaos at the retreat in Saigon that brought that undeclared war to a disgraceful end. If people wore flowers in their hair in San Francisco for the summer of love in 1966 you had the summer of madness in the Hollywood Hills in 1969 with the Manson murders. If Woodstock symbolized love and peace, then it all fell apart at Altamont in December 1969. Truth is since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden there has never been a decade of love and peace.

Maybe the truth of this occurred on May 4, 1970 when four college students lay dead at Kent State University (picture above).

My own life seemed to reflect that period. 1970 was probably my most successful year as far as my writings being published. My byline was appearing in several different publications, even on the covers and two of my poems had been selected for an anthology of American poetry that year. But as the new year began I was beginning a job at a fourth company since May 1969. By summer we left the roach-infested apartment in Philadelphia and moved to a "luxury" apartment in Aldan, Pa. I don't know if they defined the place that way, but they were luxurious to us after where we had lived.

They were good enough that Joe Watson (pictured left) one of the stars of the Philadelphia Flyers lived there. My wife sometimes met his in the laundry room. She taught that young lady how to operate the machines. The laundry room was sort of the social gathering place for the housewives in that place and my wife made friends with another lady living on our floor. We were soon invited to their apartment for a dinner and we became very close friends with this couple over the next five years.

But not all was so great for us. Since Lois had lost that first baby in 1963 she had suffered two more. Both had happened around the fourth month, so were classified as miscarriages. Now in 1970 she was preggers again. She got through the fourth month this time, but as the fifth month progressed it happened, she said she felt she was going to lose it.

I took her to Fitzgerald-Mercy Hospital. Ironically several years hence I would be working at that hospital, but then it was just the closest. The baby was born, but not strong enough to survive. This was bad enough, but Fitzgerald-Mercy was a Catholic Hospital run by a group of nuns. Because of this the baby was baptized and given last rites. They all told my wife we had to name the child and arrange a funeral. We named him Michael, contacted a funeral director in West Chester and buried the baby in its small casket atop my paternal grandfather's grave in The Grove.

This hit my wife very hard. I wanted her to stop trying to have a child. We were 29 years old and had now lost four babies. It was hopeless, even the doctors were saying so. We were not going to have children. So, what was the purpose of life? I didn't believe in any God or Heaven or Devil either. It was all an accident of time and space, a meaningless chance encounter of some mysterious cosmic chemical. All this meant was you were born, lived several years and died. That was all there was. I might have been changing jobs a lot, but I worked hard when I had them and for what? There was only one reason, to have the money to enjoy this short life we people lived. I decided the purpose of life was pleasure. You know the old motto, "If it feels good, do it." Well, we were going to do it while we were young enough to enjoy it and we would worry about old age when we were older, like after 40.

And so we went for pleasure. We were still good people, we certainly though so. We weren't hurting anyone. My mother wasn't too pleased with our lifestyle, but we were adults and she had no say in our life. Then one day I received a letter from the minister of my parent's church. He said a lady in the congregation had come to him and said my mother was unhappy with how I lived and thought he should try to talk to me.

I hit the ceiling. How dare this lady butt into family business and how dare he criticize. Churches were full of fools and hypocrites. I called him and asked to meet and this began my Atheism activism. Now I began having debates with ministers right in their churches. I wrote letters, often full of blasphemous language. Worse yet, I felt I was winning these debates. When one minister told me it didn't really matter what the members of his congregation believed it was an "ah ha" moment to me. What was he doing preaching anything to them, then, if it didn't matter?

Meanwhile we were getting together regularly with the couple down the hall, the lady my wife met in the laundry room and her husband. He was ten years older than the rest of us and had a somewhat shady background, at least according to him. He had been some kind of mercenary in Vietnam, talked about having killed one or two people somewhere in the past. I don't really think he was making things up. He also had at that time 72 tattoos, and this was long before tattooing became an in-thing.

We went back and forth between our apartments often. Evenings were similar. We played cards and swapped stories, often x-rated and drank. We drank a lot. For some reason alcohol had little effect on me. I could drink anyone under the table, but I'd still be walking a straight line, not slurring my speech and totally conscious and in control. I don't know why, it just was. I never forgot the night before and I never experienced a hangover. It drove my friend nuts. Most of our evenings ended when I either helped guide him back to his apartment or picked him up from where he passed out and carried him to his bedroom.

The four of us went out together. On one occasion in southwest Philadelphia I had to drag him into the car and escape before the police came when he insisted on getting into a game of street hockey with a bunch of kids. He had once played semi-pro hockey. A mother called the police. There were other times I pulled him out of bars before the fights started.

My old gang of friends had disappeared by this time. My closest friend, Joe, was in Vietnam. The rest disappeared as I changed jobs and addresses. So this couple was our social circle now. There wasn't much artistic talk. This was just party time and drinking.

I'm trying to be discreet about my life in this period. There was a Jekyll and Hyde aspect to my life. Family and old friends didn't see this part of it. I was considered as nice, a hard worker, a decent fellow, which I honestly saw myself being as well. The drinking and the sex was private and hurt no one. And as far as I was concern my campaign against religion was a beneficial endeavor. I was exposing this sham called religion.

The couple we befriended at the apartment house weren't our only friends in this period. There was another couple as well. We met them in a lingerie shop. There was drinking involved on these get-togethers, too, but that wasn't the focus. This relationship revolved totally around sex. I don't want to go into details here. I do want to emphasize this was not a wife-swapping situation. I have never had sex with anyone other than my wife in my life. This was games, this was picture-taking, this was spending the night in the same room and having breakfast in the nude. In other words, this was not a healthy friendship.

The road I had taken as the 1970s began and we neared thirty years of age, was drought with sin and danger. If it had continued I do not know where I would be today. Like the pornography it would only grow worse in order to get the same thrill. It is also true my attitude toward the world was not very positive either. Underneath the constant partying was a feeling of worthlessness. My wife was also having more and more bouts of depression.

But something must have changed the direction of my life or I wouldn't be writing this now, right? Something did and it came out of one more great loss.

To be continued...

Getting Here Part VIII; Peep Show into My Soul

One day during the mid-nineteen-sixties an establishment opened on Walnut Street directly opposite Rittenhouse Square. It popped-up between a couple of boutique shops and above the cement stairs between them. It was a different type of business. (These stores are no longer there. Today a large parking garage is on these lots.) It was not fancy. In fact, was quite plain and sparse inside. I had never seen anything like it. The two rooms contained a counter with a clerk who would make change (all quarters), and these old time Nickelodeon machines. I had only seen such contraptions in the Penny Arcade at Dorney Park. There was a viewer atop them that you pressed your eyes into much as you do with binoculars. You dropped a quarter in a slot and a film began. At Dorney Park the films were old cowboy movies. Here each film featured a lone, but different woman. Each woman would dance about a bit and then removed a piece of clothing. This would continue a few minutes and then suddenly the screen would go black.When you dropped in another coin she would pick up where she left off (or should I say, "taken off") peeling her layers. She would soon be only in her underwear and bingo, the screen would darken once more until another quarter plinked down the slot. After dropping in a dollar worth of coin the woman would be cavorting completely naked.

This was the opening salvo in the so-called sexual revolution.

It was not long afterward that the first adult bookstore opened, I believe on West Market Street or perhaps Chestnut. Soon adult bookstores popped up here, there and everywhere. Eventually, perhaps by city edict, these adult bookstores and peepshows coagulated on Arch Street near the Reading Terminal. A whole block between 13th and 12th Streets became one big sex tease. (Picture on right. The last of these was torn down to build the new Pennsylvania  Convention Center in 1993.)

There had been a few so-called "Art Theaters" in Philadelphia, such as the Art Holiday (in its heyday on the right and after it closed in 2007 on the left). We sometimes went to these movie houses. They showed grainy short reels of well-known strippers, such as Blaze Starr [ real name: Fannie Belle Fleming] and Tempest Storm [real name: Annie Blanche Banks] along with the occasional Naturalist (Nudist) flick with the requisite volleyball game. But as the 'sixties progressed, so did these theaters (if you can call this progress). They had to. By the 'sixties even mainline theaters were beginning to show Russ Meyer sexploition films and in the early 'seventies hardcore pornography such as Deep Throat (1972) was playing on main street. The little fringe art theaters soon were featuring live shows.

It was in these places, the peep shows, adult bookstores and art theaters, I spent my spare time and my spare dollars. And over those years I progressed as well. Before these establishments opened I was content with the popular men's magazines such as Playboy. My wife had even given me a subscription to Playboy for Christmas one year. Once I had a taste of what was in those Nickelodeon machines such magazines became too tame. The repetitious centerfolds gave me no thrill and as the years went by that thrill became more and more elusive. The magazines and films had to grow more explicit and then more kinky. Let me just say there is little in the way of deviate sexual acts I have not vicariously indulged in through flickering images or printed page.

Was I addicted to pornography? I know there are psychiatric professionals who hold there is such a thing. Personally I chalk it up to a weakness in character. I liked doing it so I kept doing it not thinking there was anything wrong in doing so. Today we don't want to recognize that people are at fault for their own failings, so we must redefine our behavior as a "disease" of some sort, which absolves us of guilt. We couldn't help it! I think I could have stopped it, but simply didn't want to. 

Nonetheless, The American Society of Addiction Medicine believes there is such a thing as pornography and sexual addiction calling it non-substance addiction and defining it thus:

"Food and sexual behaviors and gambling behaviors can be associated with the "pathological pursuit of rewards"

Furthermore an expert in sexual addiction research has even defined a reason for sexual and pornographic addiction. According to Dr. Patrick Carnes this addiction usually results from a child "growing up in a dysfunctional family, especially one with rigid rules, little warmth and affirmation, abandonment, and sexual or emotional abuse."

Certainly this description comes very close to my own childhood experience, with a couple of notable exceptions. First of all, I was never sexually or physically abused, but I was emotionally abused. The other exception is "one with rigid rules". I grew up with little in the way of rules or guidance. However, there was a lack of warmth and especially affirmation. We were not a hugging family. In fact by my teens I had developed an aversion of being touched. I dreaded those aunts or family friends who insisted on greeting me with a hug, or worse, a kiss. As far as affirmation, there was very little. There was no positive encouragement, but there was a lot of negative criticism and discouragement. Also, although technically there was no abandonment in the usual sense within the family, there was definitely the feeling of abandonment in my psyche. My father had "abandoned" me by going to war. That was something most children of my generation had to deal with, but he further "abandoned" me by becoming a long-distant trucker who was seldom home. My parents reinforced such feelings by sending me to my grandparents on the weekends when my father was home. I also felt strongly rejected in the last year of my grandfather's life when he sunk down into a sea of alcohol. My grandfather had been closer to me than my dad, but when he turned to constant drink he turned mean and berated me. 

These conditions at home combined with the bullying and rejection of my peers at that time contributed to me being a very troubled adolescent.

Dr. Carnes further outlined four core attributes leading to pornographic and sexual addiction.

1. The person believes they are basically bad and unworthy. I don't ever recall feeling I was a bad person, but I did often feel unworthy. I never felt I could live up to anyone's expectations: dad, teachers or other kids.

2. The person believes no one could love them as they were. This is certainly something I felt as a teen. I constantly complained no one would ever like me and no girl would ever date me. I was too skinny, I wore glasses and I was too shy. I wished all the time to be completely different than I was. I wanted to be tough and aggressive. I dreamed of being six feet tall and weighing 200 pounds, because in a lot of what I read this was given as the ideal he-man. I did eventually obtain this dream. I grew to be six feet tall and in my thirties I reached 200 pounds and then some, and I will tell you I never want to cross that 200 pound boundary again. It wasn't being a he-man; it was just being hefty.

3. The person feels their needs will never be met if they must depend on others. This is exactly what happened to me. I did not trust anyone else. I preferred to work alone and  learn in secret because I feared ridicule if I failed in front of others. I also did not trust any kind of help from anyone. This self-dependance could have easily have gotten me killed. Since I feared my father's badgering to learn to swim, I went off alone one day to a lake when there was no other soul in sight. I walked to the deep end and I jumped in. That is how I learned to swim. Obviously I succeeded, because there was no one about to pull me out if I sank.

4.  The person believes sex is their most important need.  "When a child's exploration of sexuality goes beyond discovery to routine self-comforting because of the lack of human care, there is potential for addiction. Sex becomes confused with comforting and nurturing." For example, a lonely and abused 13-year-old finds comfort in masturbation and pornography. More and more, he or she uses that for solace. As years go by, the type of sexual acting out may change. It can involve promiscuity, affairs, and visiting massage parlors or prostitutes."

Here I divert from this last core rule. I never felt sex was my most important need. Perhaps because by the time I experienced sexual feelings I was already using writing as my escape. My writing had become the most important need by the time I was thirteen. But I did also find escape in sexual fantasy, although I still really didn't know much about sex. (This is not as weird as it sounds today, the idea that a boy age 13 to 15 could be very ignorant of sex. Sex information was not as common in the 1950s as now.) I suppose you could say I found comfort in pornography since I was then getting ahold of such magazines, but I knew nothing of masturbation at that time. I was indulging in some playacting that bordered on it, I suppose, but with no awareness of why my pretending to be captured by scantily clothed lady pirates (don't ask) made my body feel so good. I certainly never visited a massage parlor or a prostitute.

In the 1960s, when I became a regular at the adult bookstores, peep shows et al, I still didn't consider sex as the most important aspect of my life. I didn't indulge in any affairs since my relationship with my wife was just fine. We were not neglecting each other, and of course, my wife shared in some of this be going to the art and Burlesque theaters with me. In the summer we made regular visits to Atlantic City and we always went to the shows at the Globe.

I saw nothing wrong in such behavior. Who was being hurt? It was just pictures or performances. I was not having trysts with anyone. I never had sex with anyone else but my wife. By all worldly standards I was an exemplary husband. There was no cheating, no committing of adultery.

I emphasize none by worldly standards. God's standards are somewhat higher, but in those days I was an Atheist, so what God wanted didn't matter to me.

But by the 1970s my life was to become more tied up in both sex and Atheism. I was to become much more an activist in both. And in the meantime our dead children were piling up.

To be continued...

Getting Here: Part III On the Obverse

 When I graduated from high school most people considered me a "good" person. After all, how could I not be, I was President of the Methodist Youth Fellowship. I was not a troublemaker in school. By high school I was popular among my classmates. I was considered smart, funny and only a little weird, I mean, I wrote poetry for Pete's sake. Girlfriends' mothers liked me, sometimes the mother liked me even better than the daughter.

By worldly standards, and what people saw, I supposed I was "good". I was shy and quiet around people. I had worked since in grade school and had a great work ethic. I did anything I could to earn some spending money. When real young I would run to the neighborhood store to pick up milk or bread for people. They might tell me to buy some penny candy for myself. By third grade I was mowing lawns and washing cars around the neighborhood. I cleaned garages and sheds. I washed celery for a greengrocer. I had a paper route. When we left town in my mid teens, I worked on farms in the summer picking crops. I shoveled parking lots of snow in the winter. I worked loading baskets of produce on trucks in Amish country. I hung samples of cleansers on doorknobs. I even babysat.  In other words I wasn't a bum.

I was clean cut, didn't drink, didn't smoke and didn't cuss, which is the me they saw.

But I had a darker side they didn't see. When I was junior high age I was a very trouble youth. My father was on the road so much it was almost as if I was the son of a single mother. When dad came home I was shuttled off to the grandparents. This was fine with me because I both feared and resented my father. I resented him because I had mom wrapped around my little finger when he was gone, but he got all her attention when he came home. I feared him because he was always belittling me, calling me Gertrude or threatening to take me up on a tower because I was afraid of heights or throw me in the deep water because I couldn't swim. "You'll either learn to swim or sink," he'd say.

At school I was constantly dodging bullies or being taunted. I had a few close friends, as I've explained before, but a lot of time I simply withdrew into myself. I read and I wrote, which were healthly outlets, but as I turned thirteen some of my pursuits were less pure.

I had always liked girls. I had friends that were girls and there were girls I had crushes on, but I didn't really know anything about S-E-X. This was the 'fifties and sex was a hush-hush subject around children. When I reached thirteen there was a strange tingling my body experienced around a girl. I also noticed their bodies were looking less like my own. My own  body was changing in strange ways, too. Somethings that happened scared me to death. I thought there was something wrong with me. Nobody had prepared me for these things.

My curiosity about how the girls might be different from me physically was growing stronger. I really wanted to see a naked girl, but how?

Now I was always an honest person. Even as a young boy I would tell a cashier if they gave me too much change. I went to a restaurant after school with some of my friends one day. For some reason the waitress gave everyone a check except me and I left without paying anything. The next day I went back and told the manager what happened, what I had eaten and paid for it. But now with this new desire I found myself with a moral dilemma.

In the local newsstand was a section of magazine and a sign, "Not for sale to anyone under 21". It those days you were not an adult until twenty-one years old. These were "Men's Magazine" and I thought they probably had pictures of naked girls inside (I was actually wrong about this. It those days the pinups were never shown naked. The "naughty bits" as Monty Python called them, were always hidden.) However, I wasn't old enough to buy these magazines. So I glanced around, grabbed a couple at random, stuffed them in my shirt and walked out.

This thievery continued for quite some time. When I had my paper route I would stuff the magazines down in the papers until I reached some private section along the route, then fish them out and look at the pictures. I am not certain what I did with them afterward. I wasn't keeping them at home for fear they would be found. I think I was dropping them in trash cans along my bike route or tossing them away back in the woods.

One day I put three such magazines under my clothes and turned around to leave. The owner of the stand was standing at the counter and he motioned to me. He pointed at my shirt and I put the incriminating evidence down on the counter. He then told me where he was going to put the magazines if he ever caught me stealing again. They would be in a very uncomfortible place where I certainly couldn't read them.  I never stole another thing after that day.

I went home scared to death of what would happen when he called my parents, which is what I expected he would do. I awoke every day for a month waiting for this, but nothing happened. I guess he let it drop with his warning. I didn't go in that newsstand anymore, though.

There was another instance that happened around that time that could have been more serious. I had expected what I did would have gone unnoticed, but the week after at school I was called to the principal's office. When I walked in there was a policeman with the principal. He confronted me and told me I could go to reform school for what I did. This time I spent sleepless nights not only fearing what my parents would do, but also expecting the authorities to haul me off to jail at any time.

Again nothing else happened. Of course, I also didn't do what I had done again either.

Since my crime spree ended I was doing without these magazines; however, I didn't go without for long. A man opened a stall at the nearby farmer's market. He sold paperback books and magazines. His stock was probably illegal. The covers had a portion cut off. I didn't know what that meant until years later when I worked in the publishing industry. These publications were return stock and should have been destroyed. The clipped covers singled they were not for resale.  I didn't know that then, but it wouldn't have mattered. I was interested in the curtain that divided his stall.

I peeked in through a break in the curtain and here were all these "special" magazines and a sign, "Adults Only Admitted". As I stood with one leg slightly across the line I heard a voice behind me. It was the stall owner.

"Interested, eh, kid?"

I expected another threatening warning, but instead the guy says, "I can see you ain't 21 (I wasn't even old enough to drive yet), but you look like a good kid; the kind of kid that wouldn't say anything to anyone." He sold me some of those magazines...every week there after.

They were even more reveling than those I had hooked from the newsstand. They were published in Sweden, even though the text, what there was, was in English. They had titles like, "Artist and Models" and claimed to be for the study of figure art. I hid them in a cubby high up in my bedroom closet. These were the magazines I wanted to be alone with while my folks were at church.

Nobody knew about my growing addiction to pornography. I didn't tell anyone, even Richard, who was my closest friend and the one I was joyriding in "borrowed" cars every Saturday night before either of us had a driver licence.

Nobody knew about our car "borrowing" either.

TO BE CONTINUED

We the People...and This Here Person

[This is a piece I wrote that appeared on another Website back in 1999. It seemed befitting to reprint it here.]

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

I thought it might be well to mention that this site supports free speech.  Apparently this kind of statement upsets some folk.  I refer anyone upset by the idea that someone supports free speech to the quote at the beginning of this eruption.  It is the first amendment of the Constitution of the United States, and it may just be the most important few words in that document.

For anyone who drifts by here who does get upset when they read that this site supports freedom of speech and begins to conjure an assault upon their tender eyes from a sty of vile language, or perverted sexual images, or manic outlines for reaping violence against people, places and things, be assured one will not find such here. This site would be rated PG at worst.

I would say this site would not contain comments or words that are offensive to anyone except it is impossible for anyone to make that claim.  There is always someone, somewhere who is offended by the most innocuous statement or interprets a comment wrongly and takes offense.  I can’t prevent this from happening anymore than anyone else can, unless I were to say nothing at all and present blank pages to the world, and if that were to be happening, then we would know there is no more freedom of speech.

If I ever write something that offends, I hope you will take the time to examine why it offends you.  I can assure it wasn’t intended to offend.  Everything expressed on these pages is opinion, and you can agree, disagree or be indifferent to it, but you shouldn’t take it personally.  If something does offend, well frankly you have a right to be offended!  If you give up your right to be offended, then the rest of us must give up the right to speak freely, and once that happens the rest of our freedoms will also soon be surrendered.

Remember, when you open someone’s site and you read something that truly offends you...you don’t have to go back there anymore!  But you should at least consider what the person is saying, should form some ideas why it offended you, should form some ideas of why you disagree, should form some ideas about why you are right in your thinking and they are wrong.  And if you are concerned about the reaction of children to any content, for gosh sake discuss it with your children and make it clear to them what is wrong with it.

There use to be a quote: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.^” This was a paraphrase of a statement written by the Frenchman Voltaire to a M. le Riche: “Monsieur l’Abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.”  The truth is once we begin to decide we can put limitations on what can be said, we have destroyed freedom of speech.

I would also say, so what if someone writes a diatribe of invective against a people, a race or a religion?  Doesn’t that say more about that speaker then those spoken against?  The object must be to cut through the emotional reaction to words and cool them off with logical argument against such ideas.  If the ideas expressed are that of my enemy, I would still rather know this is my enemy and this is what she or he thinks, then to have my enemy banned from my view where they are busy planting verbal daggers in my back. 

Freedom of speech is our right by the Constitution.  It is the way we have to express ideas, good or bad, and place them in open debate.  It is the one weapon we all have to protect our other freedoms, and it is the power of such a freedom that makes many groups, and politicians, and others wish to limit speech and dictate what is proper to say.  You may hate what someone says, but when someone can speak against you, and you can speak against him or her, then you know for a while you are still free and safe.   When you must guard your expressions and avoid certain subjects is when you are in danger. 

There is reason to feel in danger today.

Nominally Christian

We were in a group a few evenings ago having a discussion about marriage. Some one asked if we were Christian when we wed and I answered, "nominally". Why did I say that? After all, we were wed by a Minister in a Methodist Church before a host of witnesses. A beautiful stained-glass window depicting Christ as the Good Shepard shown before us. The vows were the standard Christian ones.

I have told of my early exposure to the church, where I was sprinkled as a baby in the Grove Methodist Church and later attended Sunday School and Methodist Youth Fellowship in Downingtown.

My wife's family were Lutheran and she had a similar background of attendance, although in her case, her parents were regular church goers, in fact her mother played the organ.

In 1956 my parents bought a home in Bucktown and at the end of ninth grade I moved to the new home. I thought I left church behind at that point, but for some reason when my parents settled into their new home, they also settled into a life of church going, to a Methodist Church in Spring City. Immediately the pressure was on me to go to church again. This time I had no out, not being able to point to their lack of church going as a reason why I shouldn't go either.

I was stuck.

But the next year I turned 16. I got my driver's license and I had a car. I soon struck a bargain. I would go to Sunday School, but not church. This was agreed to. What did I see as beneficial in this? Sunday School was shorter for one thing. It began at 9:00 and ended 45 minutes later to allow for preparations for the church service at 10:00. The service itself, although scheduled for an hour, often ran longer, especially on communion Sunday.

The second benefit was it gave me time alone at home while my parents and Grandmother, who was living with us at this time, attended church. I could use this time perusing the magazines hidden under my mattress. Actually, I never hid anything under my mattress. I had a safer cubby hole for hiding that kind of material. (Is there any need to explain further? I think not.)

The first Sunday of this new arrangement, I had just gotten home to the now empty house and changed from my "good" clothes when someone rapped on the door. I knew it was a stranger, because they came to our front door, which no one used who knew us. When I answered, there were two people there, Jehovah Witnesses, and the only way I could get rid of them was to buy a book. I probably should have taken this as an omen, but instead I just made certain I didn't answer any knocks at that door.

This went on for a while, except I found Sunday School deadly dull. This was probably because it was deadly dull. The man teaching it simply was not suited to teaching teenagers. Soon I worked out a new deal with my folks. Instead of Sunday School or church, I would go to the Sunday evening Methodist Youth Fellowship meetings. There were no trips to Dick Thomas's Brick Oven from this church, but the meetings were still more interesting than Sunday School. Sometimes we even had cookouts and hayrides.

The next year, I was elected President of MYF. I decided to shake things up and changed the structure from what it was to one of open discussion of Bible stories. I played Devil's Advocate, asking questions attacking a lot of the passages we read. I was right back to what I was at Downingtown with my "okay, then where'd God come from" challenges. Everybody took it I was just trying to make them think and the discussions were lively, enough so that our membership grew as new teens heard about what we did and came to the meetings. I was praised for my leadership. I was praised as a shining example of Christian youth.

But I was no Christian other than a nominal one. I didn't ask my questions to spark discussion. I meant them. I asked them to challenge the beliefs of those attending, to shake their faith if I could.

When my wife-to-be and I met, we were barely out of high school. When we married, she was 19 and I was 20. I was not that long out of MYF. My parents were still faithful attendees. There was never a doubt we would be wed in that church. Thus we had a proper Christian wedding before a long ordained Methodist minister. Yet, I wasn't a Christian, not really. I had never professed any belief in Christ. I thought I was a good guy, but I wasn't a spiritual one.

If I was only a Christian-in-name at my wedding, I was to go a long way down a different road after the honeymoon. I still thought of myself as a "good" guy, and probably in comparison to some, I was, but after a while I even renounced the nominal tag of being a Christian.

Why Me?

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Romans 1:18-25

For a time, I thought these verses meant if you resisted the choice of Jesus long enough, God would simply leave you to your own devices and you were lost forever.  I would see this in connection to the unpardonable sin.

"He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. 31And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.  Matthew 12:30-32

Then I would wonder, how did I escape God's wrath? Why me?

I certainly ignored those telling me I had to be born again. I was not moving toward God, but away. Or was I?

I have told how as a child I was forced to go to Sunday School until I reached Junior High and made such a fuss my folks gave up on that. The problem with my going was no one else was, so why me? Sunday School was boring.

In Junior High I was invited to a Methodist Youth Fellowship meeting by a friend. I went because of a promise of hamburgers at a favorite restaurant. I stayed because we played games and stuff besides all that Bible mumbo-jumbo.

My parents moved out of town several miles north as I ended ninth grade. In the new place, they started going to a Methodist Church and I was again forced to attend. I talked them into Sunday School, which allowed me to be home alone when they were in Church Service. I again joined MYF and in my senior year was elected President. I played Devil's Advocate. It was thought I was just facilitating to get conversation going, but I really was challenging the beliefs being held. I thought I was quite brilliant.

After my wife and I married, we didn't go to church at all. She had grown up a Lutheran and also been forced to attend, but her circumstance was a bit different. Whereas, for most my youth my family only went to church at Christmas and Easter, her parents were faithful attendees. In fact, they were heavily involved in their church; her mother was even the organist. They had a list of don'ts they made her pledge, that she would never drink, never smoke, never do other things. 

My wife started smoking at twelve.

We were very happy having nothing to do with church. Who needed it. We were just fine. We bought a house just before we got married. We weren't even eligible to sign the contracts at the time because we were underage. You weren't an adult until 21 in those days. I was just 20 and she was still 19 when we married.

We had a house. We had a new car. We ate out regularly. We had decent jobs. We had a plan.

Then the problems started.

She lost the first child at home alone. She lost her job. We lost the house. We lost another child.  I had a breakdown at work. She had an affair. We almost lost our marriage.

And I got very sick one day. I don't know what I had. I was as sick as I ever had been or been since. I literally believed I was going to die. I lay in the bed, soaked with sweat, my fever sky high, my body in great pain, exhausted and scared. It was dark. The blinds were shut. It was night out. I actually called out for God to save me cause I didn't think I would be alive come morning. Then I noticed some light on the wall. It was a cross. I don't understand where it came from. I looked around for the source, but couldn't figure it out. It stayed as I feel asleep and when I awoke in the morning it was gone, but so was my fever and my pain.

I looked for that cross time and again after that, but no cross ever shown on the bedroom wall again. Very strange, I can't explain it.

But that moment didn't save me. I just got well physically. And we lost the third baby.

I didn't totally forget that strange cross or God yet. We decided to give church a chance. Not the churches where our parents attended, but some other mainstream congregation somewhere. So we began visitations on each Sunday and no where welcomed us. We were just two strangers passing through. Perhaps we appeared alien in dress or with my long hair. One church was even outright hostile to us, as if we were disturbing their finely tuned clique. The sermons seemed empty, the buildings cold, God distant.

We had tried Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians,some others. Nothing worked.

At the time we lived with my wife's father. There was a Roman Catholic Church a couple blocks away. one day I wandered over and went inside during a mass. I became attracted to the ritual, the smell of incense, the candles and the saints. It was involving, always something to do. I got a rosary. I did the stations of the cross. I went to mass everyday. There were some things I couldn't do because I wasn't a confirmed member. So I got a book and studied all the doctrine and my wife and I talked to the priest about converting.

But the night he was suppose to meet with us to schedule everything to begin the process, he stood us up. That ended that. I didn't go back.

We moved on to churches outside the center. We had moved from her father's to an apartment in the city. We hung out in the Hippie centers at night and weekends. Nearby a popular gathering place in a city park was an Unitarian Church, so we started going there. All the talk there was on activism, protest of the war, doing street drama against the government, that type of thing. Well, we had been involved all ready in such demonstrations and acting out. It didn't seem a church for us and we stopped going.

We crossed the park to the other side and a different sort of church, called the Ethical Society. We began attending services. We sat in what was like a pew in what was like a church with what was like an alter at the center. Music played as a processional, but not a hymn; classical music. All the music was this type. A text was read, but it was from Socrates or Plato or some other philosopher. Then the "preacher" gave a "sermon". God was never mentioned. The talk was in praise of man and man's ability to overcome any problem through will and technology.

I told my wife later it seemed silly. If you didn't believe in God, why then completely imitate a Christian Church Service? To what purpose? It just seemed childish.

This ended our experiment with church going. I took a great interest in Buddhism. It was kind of prevalent in the underground culture of the time. I got some Zen and the Buddhist Scriptures and told everyone the Buddhists really understood. My interpretation was you could and should do everything. Go work hard and makes a lot of money. You would then find money didn't satisfy. Go and enjoy sensual pleasures, have as many sexual encounters as you lusted for. You would then find sex didn't satisfy. Eat and drink and do whatever felt good as much as you wished and you would discover none satisfied. Then you would be ready to move up to some spiritual level. Yessir, that made sense. Just think, you could grow spiritual after satiating your every whim.

Later I was to feel Solomon said the same thing in Ecclesiastes, except he didn't tell you to go out and do all that stuff. He told you the opposite. He was saving you the bother by telling you it was all meaningless and empty and only God could satisfy. 

So I forgot the Buddhism. Transcendental Meditation was also popular then, thanks to the Beatles, but Hinduism in any form never had any appeal to me. So I read a couple books on it, but never tried it. I did get into all those fad philosophies that came by and bought a lot of self-help books. I just went from one to another without much to show for the effort in the end. 

But now I was slipping into the occult and I bought the Satanic Bible, books on Voodoo, followed the life of Edgar Cayce, went out chasing UFOs across the night sky, until one day I said it is all bunk and simply stopped believing in anything beyond myself and this world. I declared myself an Atheist and an angry one.

I began a mini-crusade against ministers and organized religion, mainly Christian.

Those verses in Romans seemed to have come true. God had given me over to my own depravity. I was beyond hope. Of course at the time I didn't see it that way.

To be continued. 

Angry Atheist

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. Romans 1:28-32

The photo is me in 1970, looking rather Edgar Allan Poe-ish. It's the same picture as on the last post, only reversed and not doctored. This was me on the outside; that other was me on the inside like the Picture of Dorian Gray reflecting all my sins. I was becoming a monster.

The world I inhabited was changing. I had found the 60's invigorating, inventive; art and music and literature all evolving to a higher plane. We hung with the Hippies, wearing salvation army clothes or Nehru jackets, flowers in the hair, love beads about the neck, Tim Buckley concerts at the Trauma Coffeehouse. 

We lived in an apartment in what was called University City. We shared the building with college students, prostitutes, drug addicts, Black Panthers, who held meetings in the lobby, and roaches in the sink at night. We had a pet iguana. I had quit my job where I had worked since high school and was freelance writing for local papers, the Underground Press and international horror magazines.

But the ugly side of the 'sixties was catching up and taking over. The 1967 Summer of Love in Haight-Ashbury crashed outside the Chicago Republican Convention in 1968 at the Festival of Love. The Beatles had broke-up in January 1969. A period dedicated to "coming together" and "flower power" had really been marked by violence. It had kicked off with the murder of Medgar Evers in June 1963 and the November 1963 assassination of President Kennedy. The period from 1964 through 1967, that portion of the so-called "decade of love" was fraught with civil rights riots in our major cities and National Guard troops and tanks in our streets. And in 1968 reality sunk in to everyone. Martin Luther King, Jr. gunned down in April at age 39; Robert F. Kennedy gunned down in June at age 43. It was now more the age of the Yippies than the Hippies. 

By 1970 there was no more delusion that "all you need is love". In May, National Guard troops at Kent State, there to keep order, opened fire and four students were left dead. The icons of the era were passing away from their habits and self-abuse. Jim Morrison in July. Jimi Hendrix in September. Janis Joplin in October. All dead at age 27.

I turned 29 in June.

I was taking on the world.

In 1968, the Republican Party attempted to take away my right to vote and I had to go to court to stop them. I was angry at all political parties. I was registered Democrat, but I voted for third party candidates like Dick Gregory. I didn't like the business world either. I was writing letters to the CEOs of major companies. They were not polite letters. But what I really went after was the church. 

What set me off?

My wife and I had visited my parents on Easter and went to church with them. Fine. But then I received a letter from the pastor, Reverend R. He told me I had hurt my mother. How?

Apparently some woman in the church had complained to him about our appearance, he had passed this along to my mother and it upset her. He suggested I should come and apologize and ask forgiveness.

Me? Why Me? How dare that women and this preacher judge me. And the church was a bunch of hypocrites anyway, whose only interest was money. I had not attended that church for a decade and yet the only concern they had was money. The only communication they ever sent me was an annual letter asking for donations. In fact, one such letter had come the same week as Reverend R.'s missive.

I set up a meeting to confront this man. I told him I didn't appreciate him sticking up for this woman and they shouldn't have put it on my mother. They should have told me to my face. I told him what I considered that woman to be. He said she was trying to lead me back to the Lord by pointing out my sins. I told him there were plenty of sinners in his church, tell her to point out to the usher who always smelled of booze his sin and then listed some others whose flaws I knew. He told me I needed to forgive those people and threw the story of the Adulterous Woman at me, the whole "casting the first stone" bit and that Jesus forgave the woman and that was the lesson, that I should forgive this woman and these others. I told him Jesus also told the woman to "go and sin no more". Repentance comes with forgiveness, I said, tell that woman to repent and that usher to stop getting drunk on Saturday night and then I'll forgive them. Oh, I thought, score one for me! 

We had other such debates both in person and in letters. Here are some of the milder passages of the letters.

After considerable thought, I have come to a decision about your question of my spiritual comfort and to which church or religious interpretation I entrust my allegiance. I conclude none; that is; if I don’t claim out and out atheism, I certainly admit to a deep-seated agnosticism.

There is another, perhaps tenuous, reason to give you an explanation. Because you are a man of God, it must be your duty to concern yourself when anyone strays from the religious establishment. If you would not ask why, would not care, would not debate such a profession by a fellow human, then you would be guilty of dereliction of your faith and calling. Whereas I reject the legendary and mythological ideal of Judeo-Christianity and am free to show no concern for anyone but myself (taking here the more common opinion of the non-believer), you by tradition and expectation must be immediately involved with your fellow man. If this was not so, then you would do far more damage to your church and faith than any atheist or critic can ever do.

The most interesting fact I ever learned in Sunday school was one of the teachers had a dog that was over twenty years old. Don’t you find that remarkable?

I was on a roll now. I wasn’t stopping with one preacher. Bring them on. Here are excerpts from another debate with another minister, Reverend D

Dear Mister D.,

They have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have laid him…

And here we have the crux perhaps of the problem. No church, none, meets the requirements of the Bible. Where the Catholics stress certain lines, they miss others, and so it is the same with the protestant.

Who has my Lord?

I am afraid I believe each man has his own Lord; and nobody has him. Who has exclusive rights to God?

I have rolled about our conversation in my mind and read further and rummaged in my own conscience and these are the thoughts I have dredged up from doing so.

Yet does not one in a heap if ruins

stretch out his hand,

And in his disaster cry for help?

Did I not weep for him whose day was

Hard?

Was not my soul grieved for the poor?

But when I looked for good, evil came;

and when I waited for light, darkness

came. (Job 30: 24-26)

You are certainly right in saying you find it hard to accept I would lean toward Catholicism. That was a passing island that I clung to as I attempted to claim some finger hold on religion. But like the other shaky grasps I have held in the past, a man of the cloth stepped upon my hand and loosened me.

As the churches rejected me, I am rejecting them you see. It is deeper than that, of course, but that is what most people will adopt as my reasoning, and so be it. I was forgotten by Bethel, ignored by the Lutherans, Episcopalians and Catholics and repulsed by the Ethics. Besides I no longer believe any man knows anything about God. If we did know once, then it was before weak churches or their opposite who subverted God. Anyway, I think, like the scripture indicates, God will give support to he who supports himself.

I don’t think God is dead: I think he is sealed in some church pledge envelope somewhere buried beneath the gold and silver.

I guess I’m incurable. But, oh God, I am not alone in my illness.

If those verses in Romans 1 meant God gave up when you resisted enough and left you go your own way, then I was lost for sure. There was no way back to God from here, not that I was looking for a way. Or was I? Or was God looking for me? 

I could explain away the Bible as legends written by men. I could explain away God because I couldn't see him.  I could explain away ministers as hypocrits.

But I still couldn't quite explain that cross the appeared on my bedroom wall.

To be continued: Peace and Depravity

Peace and Depravity

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator Romans 1:24-25a

During the 'sixties a repeated chant was "never trust anyone over thirty". In the summer of 1971 I crossed that Maginot Line. In a couple more years the so-called Decade of Love would be over, the Vietnam War would end and Nixon would be sinking in the flood from Watergate. An era of my life was ending as well.

The group of artists, actors, poets and writers my wife and I had socialized with for several years was going separate ways. The Hippie culture and psychedelic streets near the river were fading from view. The Beatles had broken up in 1969. By 1973 a different sound was dominating everything, Disco. The new icon was a skinny John Travolta in a tight white suit.

I was still selling some writing, still going to evening college, still not believing in God, but I was losing the anger. Fighting every authority figure was behind me. I had been through a couple of jobs, had moved to New Jersey and in a sense felt at peace. I now had a job that was going to last several years. I was an Assistant Controller (and eventually would be the Systems Manager) for a steel fabricating company in Philadelphia. We were no longer living in the "roach hole", but had a very nice modern apartment at Ski Mountain in South Jersey. (If you know anything about South Jersey, you will chuckle at the idea there could actually have been a ski resort there.) 

In the near past we had lived with a motley crew of neighbors of sometimes questionable repute. Our life had been one of some austerity. There were months when I lived on soft pretzels for lunch and there had been stretches when I would walk along the trolley stops looking for dropped change in order to buy food. Now we lived among people who in a coming decade would be called Yuppies. The times of protest had ended; party time had begun.

Our old crowd had talked about art, literature, politics and philosophy. The new friends we were making had little interest in any of that.  If our 'sixties group was cerebral, our new associates were tactile. Pleasure was at the center of our relationships.

In began with W. and B. and a chance meeting in a lingerie shop. My wife was there to buy a teddy or something. She took a couple items into the dressing rooms and I found myself standing next to another fellow of approximately my same age self-consciously holding his wife's purse, too. A moment later this nice-looking young blond woman came out of the dressing rooms wearing only a fish-net body suit. She twirled about and asked her husband what he thought. He approved and she went back behind the curtain. He glanced at me and we smiled at each other.  What do you say in such a circumstance?

But somehow this turned into a strange contest between his wife and mine for most daring display. Out they would come in another brief wisp of material. The owner of the shop seemed delighted, and why not? When we turned to leave there was a large crowd gathered around the front of her shop watching this impromptu burlesque show.

While waiting, her husband and I had talked and exchanged telephone numbers and addresses and we became friends. We would get together at each other's apartments and play striptease games, take Polaroid pictures and have sex.

Now, I want it to make it clear. We were not wife-swapping. We only had sex with our own spouse.  I did not see any of this as sin at the time. I was still a faithful husband. And really by secular standards I was and am. I was a virgin when I met my wife and I have never had sex with any other person. By the worldly definition I have not committed adultery. By Biblical standards, I have over and over again. Besides this voyeuristic period of sexual games with another couple, I had long been a collector of pornography. But I saw no harm in it. I wasn't neglecting my wife. These were just images on the pages of magazines. Or those women contorting themselves in the nude upon some sleazy stage were just a show. Or those base acts were just shadows on a movie screen.  I didn't "really" break the Seventh Commandment. I didn't believe in the Ten Commandments anyway.

This friendship with W. and B. didn't last long. We began to suspect they wanted to go where we didn't and we broke it off.  We found another couple who we had a much longer relationship with. These were our drinking buddies.

When we met B. and G. we all lived in the same apartment building.  We would get together every weekend and sometimes in between. Sometimes we went out, but often we simply gathered in one of our apartments, played pinochle and drank. For some reason I had a great tolerance of alcohol and didn't get drunk. Not so much with B. Most evenings ended with me picking up his inert body and carrying it back to his bed before my wife and I went home.  There were also times I had to pull him out of a bar before fists began to fly or off the street before the cops came. But, although there were dirty jokes and innuendo aplenty in our conversations, there was no sexual play with B. and G. B. was an extremely jealous husband with a tendency toward violence.

This relationship ended when I got saved. Somehow after that, B. and G. found us different and no longer with shared interests.

We had some other friends during this period. We had a long and close relationship with V. and M. These friends would have been considered perfectly respectable. There was no sexual hanky-panky, no drinking to drunkenness. But there were a lot of parties and everything was pleasure. V and I played tennis almost every lunchtime during the work week and golf every weekend. 

For about four years life couldn't have been better as far as I was concerned. The only fly in the ointment had been losing another baby. It seemed pretty hopeless and I had accepted the idea of never having children. That was just one of those things. We had each other, a nice place to live and friends. We considered ourselves good people. We worked hard and paid our taxes, harmed no one, so what was wrong with having fun when ever we could. This was what life was all about was our motto. Grab the gusto. If it feels good, do it. 

Without kids, there were no encumbrances. We were free to do as we pleased. We could just take off on weekends and enjoy vacation trips each year. It was on one of those vacation trips my wife said something that would change everything. 

"Honey", she said, "I think I'm pregnant again."  This would make number seven.

To be continued: Seven, the number of completeness. 

The photo was me in 1971.