Getting Here Part VI: Change is Blowin' in the Wind

1965 was a pivotal year. Time fired change our way with the rapidity of a machine gun. Rat-a-tat-tat, we were hit by another blast. We had lost our house, been threaten and moved in with my father-in-law, an uncomfortable situation. Within the course of those months I was to be drafted, have four separate jobs, something of a nervous breakdown, give up totally on religion and have a dust-up with the powers that ran Upper Darby. Change wasn't just blowin' in the wind, it was a bloomin' hurricane. No wonder we were wondering where in the world we were.

It wasn't long after we moved that President Johnson, near the end of August 1965, ordered the drafting of married men. (I wonder how many marriages that broke up? A number of men had rushed into marriage during the early years of the Vietnam War because marriage gave them a deferment.) Funny how the letter started off with "Greetings" as if it was a Christmas Card. I had to report to 401 North Broad Street for a pre-induction physical. I wasn't thrilled about this. I knew exactly where I would end up and it wasn't a safe place. However, to make a long story short, I suffered from psoriasis. It had appeared in childhood. At this time it was pretty light, but there was one patch on my shoulder and that was enough to get me classified as 1-Y. [Registrant available for military service, but qualified only in case of war or national emergency. Usually given to registrants with medical conditions that were limiting but not disabling (examples: high blood pressure, mild muscular or skeletal injuries or disorders, skin disorders, severe allergies, etc.).] I would have been the rare bird thanking God for a skin disease, except back then I didn't thank God for anything. In fact, around that time I pretty much dismissed God altogether from my life.

Lois and I began looking for a church. Things had obviously went a little south in our lives and suddenly we got interested in religion. But we weren't so much seeking God as a sanctuary from reality. We were looking for a warm and fuzzy place, not a Savior. After all, we were very nice people a bit down on our luck and in need of some commiseration.

We didn't find it. We didn't find anything. We started by visiting a number of "mainstream" churches in the area (Presbyterian, Baptist, Episcopalian) and one big Methodist Church, even though we were trying to avoid the denominations of our parents, which were Methodist and Lutheran. These churches were not very welcoming. They were actually rather intimidating. No one spoke to us. Some people even glared at us. Was it my long hair? I don't know, but we distinctly felt unwelcome.

There was a large Roman Catholic Church a few blocks from where we lived then. I began to go there in the morning before work and attend Mass. I bought a book on Catholic beliefs, a Rosary, a miraculous metal. This was what religion should be, I thought, all this ritual and objects to handle. I felt since I was doing something I was earning my way to Heaven. We ( I talked her into it) decided to join the Catholic Church. I knew this would give both our families fits, but by this time I was doing a lot of stuff for just that reason, to gave my family fits.

But the night the Priest was supposed to meet with us to start the process he didn't show up. He stood us up without so much as a phone call.  So that was it for Catholicism. If the Priest doesn't care, why should we?

Our search didn't end here. We just moved a bit further from the religious center. The Unitarians were our next stop. I had no idea what that name meant, but a church was a church to me as long as it claimed to be Christian,  but that requirement ceased with the Unitarians. This was a church in downtown Philadelphia. We attended their service, but this was really a big pep rally for the next protest to be held. We sat on the floor in a big room and talked strategy for our march for civil rights or against the war or to save the earth or to save a rare flea endangered by a highway project, whatever was that particular weeks reason for anger. Now Lois and I were already getting involved in protests we didn't need more. This wasn't what we wanted from a church.

Having believed we had exhausted Christianity at this point, we turned to the Ethical Society. We went to their Sunday morning service. We entered and some music was played as in my old church, a kind of prelude. Some songs were sung at times as well, but none of this music was a hymn. They were Classical pieces. Someone said something corresponding to a prayer, but it was a poem. A text was read, but it was a piece by one of the great philosophers. A sermon was given focused on the greatness of mankind, saying that the problems of the world would eventually be solved by the technological advances made by man. Everything was on the unique quality of humans to do good and save the world, like humans had did such a wonderful job of that so far.

It was all I could do not to laugh. When we left I said it was a joke. If you don't believe in God and think mankind is the end-all and be-all, why are you parodying what could easily be a Methodist service, simply replacing anything that smacks of God with some human produced babble?

There were sudden changes in my work situation during the remainder of 1965 as well. I had been doing quite well and become the supervisor of my unit, but I had grown restless. I had also learned when I first took a job in this unit I had made a tactical error. It was a service division, not a clerical one. I learned from others this was a dead end. There was a stigma against people working in the service divisions and once there it was very difficult to get a position in the clerical areas, but those were the areas where advancement was possible. Of course, I was just eager to make some more money and was getting bored with what I was doing because it had become routine to me. I applied for and got a job as Traffic Control Clerk.

It was a grade level improvement and more money, but it was located in the back of a warehouse at the refining yards. My job was basically handling the paperwork and dispatching the various trucks in and out of the refinery. I was on the job two weeks and I had a breakdown. I am not certain why. Maybe the isolation and dreariness of my office, but more likely I was dealing with men much like my father. At any rate, I came to work one morning and I began to cry and I couldn't stop. Totally embarrassing, especially around the type of men I worked with there. But they didn't make fun of me. They were concerned and the boss sent me home.

I was sure my career at ARCo was done. I was depressed and worried and thought I would be fired. Personnel, (you know, what they call Human Resources today) called me back in after a week. They gave me a job as a Parcel Post Clerk back in the mailroom and told me I would be offered the next Level 6 job that opened. That was the Level of the Traffic Control job, so not only wasn't I fired, I wasn't even going to be demoted.

About a month later I was offered a position in Accounts Receivable. So in the course of less than two months I had been Supervisor of Addressograph, Traffic Control Clerk, Partial Post Clerk and Ledger Clerk.

Then that winter Lois announced she was pregnant again. The Doctor warned her to be careful. Given her history with the first baby and his examination, she had a number of problems that could put the pregnancy at risk.

Near Christmas there was a bad snowstorm. Two blocks away a stop sign was knocked down when a car skidded into it a couple weeks earlier during another storm. Despite the snow my parents came down to visit on Christmas. My father was a professional driver, snow didn't deter him. However, they almost had an accident because of the downed stop sign had still not been replaced. They had no way of knowing the traffic on the cross street didn't have to stop, because it looked like the street they were on was the right of way.

Then a few days later, Lois fell on a sidewalk nearby because it had never been shoveled and the snow had packed to ice. What angered me was this sidewalk was at the home of the Local Committeeman for the Republican Party, which at that time had a stranglehold on the government in the borough. It was the law that sidewalks be cleared of snow within 24 hours of the end of a snow storm. I had shoveled (picture on right is me in that 1965 snow doing just that). Everyone on our street had shoveled, except this politician.

My wife's family (she had several living on the street) were upset. They knew my wife's condition, plus they were also already angry because snowplows had plowed out the streets of the upper-income sections of the township, but not our streets, resulting in the trash trucks being unable to come thought and the garbage was piling up. They said we should all write letters to the Mayor complaining about this Committeeman and the lack of plowing. Well, you know how it goes, I wrote a letter and no one else did. I wrote about the stop sign and the trash and especially about my pregnant wife's fall.

Next thing I know the Committeeman is knocking on the door. He accused me of lying. Then he said I didn't even know where he lived. I said, "Come on" and led him outside and up the street to his house, which still hadn't been shoveled. He was furious. He called me a name and I though he was going to hit me, but he turned and stomped into his home.

Not long after my wife gets a tearful phone call from her aunt. Her uncle had a patronage job with Upper Darby, now someone in government called and said if her niece's husband didn't stop writing letters they were going to fire her husband. She begged Lois to tell me to shut up. I tried to get her family to band together, but in the end I stopped for their sake. This was not to be my last confrontation with bad politicians. (Probably why I don't like them much even today.)

My wife did end up losing that baby, too. It wouldn't be the last.

These winds of 1965 were to blow us in an entirely different direction in our lives and eventually to a very dark place.


TO BE CONTINUED...

Getting Here Part II: Losing My Religion

Most people are born into a religion. Given the time and place of my birth it is not surprising that religion was Christianity. I was Baptized several months later at the Methodist Church where my parent's had married.

My family had a religious history. My mother's had a long affiliation with the Methodists on her father's side and the Reformed Church of Christ on her mother's.

My father's paternal ancestors had landed on these shores in 1683. They were among the Welsh Quakers chartered part of Chester County, Pennsylvania by William Penn. His mother's side, which had arrived from Scotland in early 1774, were longtime Presbyterians.

Although many of my ancestors were very devout, not much of that religious background was apparent in my life. No one was going to church on any regular basis, perhaps on Easter or Christmas. We said grace at Sunday dinner, a task that fell to me once I was able to talk well enough. My prayers were pretty short and repetitive.


In 1950 we moved back to Downingtown from the swamp.  I had left that town halfway through first grade and came back halfway through third, a mere two years that may as well been 200. These were years during which my old classmates formed cliques and bonding.  I wasn't there thus was left out of that process.  My best friend from earlier days had moved away. The boys I once considered friends now made fun of me, even bullied me.

Some girls I knew from before remained friends, but playing jacks and hopscotch with Iva and Judy hardly won the other boys over to my side. At recess I was one of those left dangling to near the end when sides were chosen for games. I didn't know the fundamentals of most team sports, except soccer for some reason. Soccer was not the game of choice in town; it was football and baseball.

Religion started off every day at school.  In those times the school day opened with the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, The Lord's Prayer and a reading from the Bible. No, I wasn't sent to some Christian academy, these were public schools. Any Christian Love espoused by any of those passages didn't last beyond the closing of the Bible and first bell. I remained some kind of pariah to most of these kids.

Also, once back in town, it was decided I should go to church.  Each Sunday I was dressed in my one suit and "good" pair of shoes and sent walking the length of Washington Avenue to attend Sunday School at the Methodist Church. I hated it. For one thing the direct route took me through the territory where a gang of older boys always came after me if I was spotted. For another, no one else in my family was going to church, why me? I found Sunday School terribly boring, plus I wasn't excepted in with the kids there either.

I didn't see much value in any of this religious stuff. It was something to be endured because adults made you do it. God wasn't answering any of my prayers. I woke up in the morning and my enemies were still there.

As I aged it only got worse. I was tall, thin and gangly, with a slightly hunched back. I was sometimes called "Quasimodo" or worse. By seventh grade I also had to wear glasses, so "four-eyes" got added to the insults.

These things drove me more into myself. I was perfectly happy being alone. I began to write and spent a lot of time in the town library. When I began Junior High I stopped going to Sunday School. I just made such a fuss about it my mother gave up trying to force me.

Now, I don't want to paint  a picture of being a totally pathetic figure huddled in some dark garrett. It is not that I didn't make friends, but they were generally considered "different" too. Stu was the only Jewish kid in town at the time, a fact that exposed me to anti-semitism. Ron was as thin and gangly as I and threw like a girl. Dave wore glasses and had weird hair. Franny was black and thus I also became exposed to racism. He wasn't even allowed to visit my home. Bill was small. Sam was a girl; a Tomboy. None of my friends reflected much in the way of religious beliefs, except Stu and his were mocked by my father, who wasn't altogether approving of my friendship with a Jew. He didn't even know about Franny.

Overtime I took part in various activities that I enjoyed, Boy Scouts in particular. I also began going to MYF meetings in Ninth Grade. A boy in my class invited me, but I only went because they were going to a favorite restaurant of mine at the time, Dick Thomas' Brick Oven. I thought I'd go that one time, but I enjoyed the evening and began going regular.

The Pastor decided we should know about different religions and over several weeks a priest, a rabbi, a whatever would come and speak to us about what they believed. I found it very interesting, but it did nothing to bring me closer to God. They all seemed very sincere. How was I to know which was right? Maybe none were? I asked the Pastor one day, "If God made the universe, then who made God?" He gave some stock "with God everything is possible" and left it at that. I thought I had him; I thought I was pretty smart.

Boy Scouts, MYF, Babe Ruth Baseball and my paperboy job all came late in my junior high years and before too many months of involvement with any of them my parents moved us out of town again. After years of living with my grandparents or renting a house nearby, my parents managed to buy a home of their own. It was several miles north of Downingtown out in the country.

I was back into a form of isolation again.

Much to my surprise and chagrin after moving my parents began to go to church, and of course, expected me to begin so again as well.  I was 15 when we moved. I was forced to join them in the pew every week, but when I turned 16 and got my driver's license I made a deal. I would go to Sunday School, but not Sunday Service.

It was not that Sunday School thrilled me. It was even more boring than the one at Downingtown. However, when Sunday School ended I came home to an empty house while my folks were at church. I wanted to have that alone time. I had some special magazines hidden away in a back spot of my closet I wanted to read, or more precisely, magazines with pictures I wanted to look at.

If religion was supposed to make you feel good, then I had a new religion and these magazines were my bibles.

I soon made another deal with my parents. I would go to MYF (Methodist Youth Fellowship) rather than Sunday school. MYF met on Sunday evenings. It was more fun than Sunday school. Yeah, we had lectures about the Bible, but then we played games. Sometimes we had outings, hayrides or cookouts.

As it were, I was elected President of MYF. I actually had power over the agenda of our meetings. I changed the lectures to discussions. I would introduce some Bible story each meeting and then play Devil's Advocate to get the arguments going. The meetings were pretty lively and our membership began to grow. I was being praised because of this, but in reality I wasn't just playing Devil's Advocate, I was trying to ridicule these stories.

The move from Downingtown changed much in my life. My social circle had widened. I still was friends with Stu and Ron, but now I had other friends and we spent our spare time on cars, girls and parties. Days were for souping up our cars and nights were for drag racing up and down Pottstown's main street.

Life had changed for me at my new school as well. The first year I remained a fringe character, although I wasn't being subjected to the constant put-downs I had experienced in Downingtown. I was sitting at a typewriter many nights that first year, typing out short stories and poems not yet knowing this would make me popular in the next year. Writing had been an escape from the world, now it was to become a door into the world.

When you are a loner who has lost your religion stepping through the door into the world can be a dangerous step.

Judged

That big-nosed (for sticking it where it isn't wanted, I guess) man on the left waving an accusatory finger is a narrow-minded, superstitious, uneducated, anti-science boob who can't think for himself believer in fairy tales.

At least that is the way my portrait was painted in a rather aggressive email I receive some six months ago.

I don't think all those things are true. Surely my nose isn't that big!

The biggest surprise about this email was it came out of a clear blue cyber sky from someone I don't know and never heard of and it told me to rethink my request to be her Facebook Friend.

I beg your pardon? I had never heard tell of this personage. What am I doing? Am I making Friend requests in my sleep?

The person began by stating, "I am an Atheist," which is a fairly empathic declaration of faith. Yes, faith, it takes faith to be an Atheist, too.

Okay, fine, and I am a Christian.

We are both human beings.

As a human being you are allowed to choose to be an Atheist if that is what you believe. I'm going to recognize we will have a somewhat different worldview, not see everything quite the same way, but we still have a lot of humanity in common to build a casual relationship upon do we not? We share the same world and struggles within it. And being a Christian doesn't necessarily make me better or worse than anyone else, although that email certainly painted me to be dumber than the average bear.

What I understand as a Christian is God loves all his creatures, even if all his creatures don't believe in Him or His Son.

Ah, but there's the rub. I might say something about God and Christ and love and creatures (can't say creatures since that implies a creator) and all that...uh...fairy tale stuff.

Now granted, since you are an admitted Atheist and I am an admitted Christian, I will have some concerns about your future beyond this world that you won't have. I might even go into my room and pray for you, but...shhh...whispering here...it isn't because I hate you. Please forgive me for doing that. Just as you as an Atheist believes all that is unnecessary, I as a Christian believe it is.


My friendships have never been built on the labels the world, nature or an individual has pinned upon their sleeve. My list of friends includes blacks and whites and browns and yellows. (I never actually had a red friend, although you might count my wife as pinkish, that is, she is one-quarter Creek.) My friends are male and female, heterosexual and homosexual, skinny and fat, tall and short, Christian and non-Christian, Jew and gentile and Arab, too. I have God-fearing friends and "Maybe-there-is-a-God-I-just-don't-know" friends, and friends who believe in nothing. I have Democrat and Republican, Progressive (whatever happened to Liberals, because I was sure I used to have more Liberal friends than anything and now nobody says they're Liberals), Conservative and downright confused about-it-all friends. I have even been on good speaking terms with a couple of Communists. I'm an equal-opportunity friendly guy.

It has been this way all my life. I've judged my friends for "the content of their character" long before Martin Luther King used that phrase in his most famous speech.

Uh, did I just use a bad word, "Judged". Oh dear, sorry, I forgot, "Judge not, lest so you be judged." Somebody said something like that. It wasn't King. Now , who was it? Let me think about it.

While we do that, here is the core of the email sent to me.

"I have little patience with people that feel they have to "share" with me, I've been there, done that. Science always wins. I am well educated in world religions and have no need to follow it up with superstition or fairy tales. With that said, I do agree with the old saying, "to each his own", but that doesn't mean I want them (bible thumpers) "sharing" with me on my page ....Understand?

"I prefer people who can think for themselves."


If you really think about it, this is a very insulting letter to send to any Christian, especially one who doesn't even know you. 




So, how do I respond to this email? Let me start by saying I think this person is...


Wait, "Judge not, lest you be judged?"  It's coming back to me.  "Judge not, that ye be not judged."  Of yeah, Matthew 7:1 and Jesus said it.


See this becomes a reverse Catch-22, doesn't it? If I criticize some bad behavior, this gets thrown at me by those who don't believe in Jesus in the first place. They get to stand in judgment of me, but I am restricted from making any judgment about them. It ends up being used to excuse any kind of excessive behavior one wishes to engage in then. 


Well, isn't that illogical? If I am walking down the street and a purse snatcher jumps from an alley to grab an old lady's pocketbook, I am to just go on my way. She struggles to hold on and he takes out a knife and begins to stab her, and I am not allowed to judge this person. 


Now just a minute, that is an extreme example. Yes, but it makes it no less valid. It says, "Judge not, that ye be not judged," not Judge only in cases of blatant extreme violence of one person against another, right? 


Unless, perhaps, it might be talking about something else, you know, something more in context of what the Bible teaches overall. There are certainly passages exhorting us to judge, aren't there? Maybe what we are talking about here is gossipy types of judgement, superficial ones based on faulty premises and prejudices. Or maybe we are talking about hypocritical judgments. Maybe we are talking about the wrong way to introduce ourselves to someone else. Perhaps it is the wrong way to present the Christian message?


I think if we extend the passage fully I might even be justified to some extend if I began judging this email writer in harsher tones than she without provocation judged me. I won't, but Matthew 7:1-2 (KJV) is saying that is what she should expect to happen. 

Judge not, that ye be not judged. 

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

Or as the NIV translates Luke 6:37 and Matthew 7:1-2:

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." 

You see, if you go around superficially judging others without careful examination you must expect they will do the same to you. I judge you, then you judge me. Then what do we have? Just a lot of who shot John going on. We have anger and further misinterpretations and no one wins. 


I was judged and found wanting without this person ever getting to know me simply because she has preconceived ideas of what a Christian is. Sad to say many times we Christians do the same thing. We judge first and quickly condemn and confront. From a comment later in her email she may have experienced just that at times in her life, been judged by Christians without a true trial, and now she is measuring it back on me. We can judge bad behavior; otherwise, how to we know not to engage in bad behavior? But how do we ever know a person's needs if we hit them over the head with the guilty stick before we even say hello? How do we ever do what we were commissioned to do if we have condemned our neighbor already?


It is so easy to jump to conclusions, isn't it? We know who isn't going to Heaven, right? We have out list of wrongdoers:  the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, sodomizers, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, slanderers and swindlers. Well, before we are quick to judge, remember to whom Paul said that and what came at the end of the passage in 1 Corinthians 6:   "And that is what some of you were." Yes, and so were some of us.


You don't begin the relationship with judgment, you begin it with love of your neighbor and an Atheist or whatever is your neighbor. You be the good Samaritan; God will be the judge.


And I still say my nose isn't that big.

 

Most Hypocritical Statement of All

A word tossed about with as much frequency as beads at Mardi Gras is hypocrite. Usually we hear "he or she's a hypocrite" applied to anyone who doesn't agree with the accuser. But what is the English definition of the word?

1 : a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion 2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings (Merriam-Webster Online)

1.a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess, esp. a person whose actions belie stated beliefs. 2.a person who feigns some desirable or publicly approved attitude, esp. one whose private life, opinions, or statements belie his or her public statements. (Dictionary.com)

I've heard this many times in my life: "I don't go to church because it is full of hypocrites".

 Well...duh! Everything is full of hypocrites. Stop the world and let me off, the world is full of hypocrites. I guess I won't vote because politics is full of hypocrites. From what my varied friends tell me, depending on their party affiliation, McCain and Obama must be running for Hypocrite of the Year?

I won't be Christmas shopping this year, the stores are full of hypocrites.  Do you know that jolly white-bearded, red-suited guy at the mall doesn't go home to the North Pole to make toys? Boy, what a big hypocrite.

I wonder where I'll work for business is full of hypocrites. Or is everything they advertise true, is running up credit card debt actually priceless and drinking beer really what it's all about?

And when people say they don't go to church because it is full of hypocrites, they are being hypocritical. Why can't they say the truth? They don't go because they don't want to. Perhaps they find church boring. Perhaps they want to do something else. Perhaps they don't believe in God. Perhaps they believe the way they live will make them hypocrites if they attended church.

We all do or say hypocritical things in our lives. Some of us more than others. Do you know what hypocrisy is? It is a sin.

Here is a secret. Come close, I want to whisper. The churches are full of sinners.

And do you know why? Because everyone in the world is a sinner.   

Admitting that fact is the first step away from personal hypocrisy and could be the first step toward wanting to be in a church. Be warned, the church is full of  the sexually immoral, the idle, the greedy, drunks, thieves and slanders, as well as hypocrites. For that is what some of us were. And whatever we were, or are,  is reason enough to be there.

But be honest to why you don't want to be there. Your reason won't offend me and I won't think less of you for being honest.