For What It's Worth

Blue

2024-08-20T07:09:00.000-07:00

I don't remember what I wore that day but

I still see the way he plopped down on the bed

beside me just before he left to run an errand

on his way to work- his weight, his hair and freckles,

how tall he'd grown in sixteen summers on the earth.

He took the script I held and tested me to see if

I had learned my lines, such silly lines, a comedy

that opened within weeks. By then I'd come home, after the

applause and bows, the glass of champagne sipped, and sit

inside the car all by myself to contemplate

the ins and outs of joining him in heaven even though I knew

it wasn't yet my time to go. It hurt ... so much ... that it was his.

Twenty years plus four have passed since then. Today the sky

is blue, the air both hot and heavy when it hits my thickened skin,

an accessory, don't you agree? that every grieving parent needs to own.

There was no script for this, no cues or blocking, and the others

in the cast were just as lost as I on where to stand or what to do.

But.

Even though the play has lasted twenty years plus four, today ...

today the sky is blue.

Adam Gillette was in an accident during the early hours of August 20, 2000 and hospitalized for two days. Declared dead on August 22, Adam was an organ donor, saving the lives of five people and giving sight to two others.

Baffling Times

2024-01-22T06:27:00.000-08:00

The insults and playground rhetoric were enough for me. Mocking a handicapped man. Insulting people’s appearance. Calling American voters “stupid.” Demeaning women.

I was, frankly, baffled by Donald Trump’s win in 2016.

Oh, I understood some of the reasons people gave-- people I respect, intelligent people who are passionate about their beliefs. I understood the willingness to ignore personality in favor of policy. I could also agree with a common argument: You don’t question the character of a surgeon, you simply want someone who’s qualified to operate.

I just never saw Trump as being qualified to lead the free world. As a Christian, I prayed for him. As an Independent, I appreciated some of the accomplishments. As a realist, I encouraged gloom-and-doomers to wait it out. “One man isn’t that powerful. It’s just four years!”

And it was.

But incredibly, a second Trump presidency is possible. Added to previous insults is the injury of multiple indictments, including two felony counts regarding the January 6, 2021 insurrection. The reason for continued support is – in my opinion, at least where many are concerned – an unwillingness to research, to objectively read the speeches, to watch the hearings and listen to Trump’s own staff members reveal his part in the day’s events.

That winter I was a substitute teacher for high school social studies classes while their regular teacher recovered from surgery. Sophomores and juniors focused on different eras in U.S. History but as it was a momentous time in their own histories, I encouraged them to watch or read about the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

Who doesn’t like extra credit?

Even as I naively steered young minds in the direction of Washington, something insidious was transpiring. On my way home January 6, I tuned my car radio to WCNO, our local public station. My heart sank.

The nflammatory tweets. Trump supporters reminding followers that blades over 3 inches weren’t allowed. The rebellion was about to begin! The Vice President was staging a coup! Speechmakers used words like “fight” and “combat.”

About half of the people gathered at the Ellipse to listen to then-President Trump’s speech were not allowed access because they refused to pass through the magnetometers used to detect weapons. He was reportedly furious: “I don’t [expletive deleted] care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me … Let my people in. … Take the [expletive deleted] mags away.”

He spoke of a stolen election, an opinion that wouldn’tbe shared by multiple (even Trump-appointed) judges. He called on Mike Pence to do “the right thing”— actually an unconstitutional act— by picking and choosing electors that would guarantee his victory.

“And we fight,” he said. “We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.”

So they fought, wreaking havoc, creating chaos, causing injuries and death. Three hours later Trump finally tweeted to “remain peaceful” and to “respect the Law.” Later, he thanked the mob, expressing his love.

Despite its violent attempt to thwart the democratic process, however, Vice President Pence affirmed the election results in the wee hours of January 7.

I apologized to my classes that day for the assignment. I wouldn’t have knowingly encouraged them to watch an insurrection. But I also pointed out that, differences of opinion and partisanship aside, the process had worked. The Constitution held. The checks and balances remained. Democracy was intact.

The question is, will it still be intact a year from now? I remain hopeful. Whatever the outcome of the November election, I will continue to pray for our President. I will appreciate good decisions and policies, and try to remember when things don't go as I would wish...that it's just four years. No one person has the power to bring down our country. No single leader can turn the attitude of the world against us.

The grand experiment of American democracy has survived, evolved and improved since its inception. I believe that it will continue. The health of American democracy does not depend on any one person or any one election, but this year's presidential race is key to the immediate future.

Having said all that...for what it's worth...let's also remember that relationships are more important to our health than politics. If that means an agreement to refrain from discussing politics at the dinner table (if people still do that) or the gym or on Facebook because of the ugliness it can trigger, so be it. How you vote...and how you think I should vote...shouldn't be a wedge between us. There are complex issues. Layers of nuance. In the end, it's just you, your conscience and your God there in the voting booth.

A lot can happen between now and November. A lot can happen in the next four years. Please choose wisely.

We The People

2020-09-05T13:02:00.001-07:00

The United States Constitution was written in 1779. Lawmakers and law enforcers pledge to uphold it. Students at school memorize its Preamble. At times people try hide behind it, as if personal preferences are constitutionally guaranteed. As the song goes, “It ain’t necessarily so.”

Revisiting the majesty of the Preamble is always enlightening:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

We the People of the United States – At the time of its writing, the Constitution had less grace than it does now, thanks to amendments and the Bill of Rights. “We the People” no longer includes slaves and owners, thankfully. No longer do the women of our country have limited rights and resources. We aren’t technically divided along racial, ethnic, religious, political, or other lines, although our reality falls short. Old prejudices remain, as all-too-frequent news stories tell us, but from a constitutional standpoint, we stand together.

In Order to form a more perfect Union – Note the absence of audacity or arrogance. Our union is not perfect, but it is more perfect. “More perfect” than Crown rule. More perfect than taxation without representation or accommodating British soldiers. Originally, the Constitution covered just the basics but provisions were made for additional material. The writers said, in effect, “This is as good as we can do right now, but changes are inevitable. Don't be afraid to make them."

Establish Justice – What is justice? Fairness, righteousness, handling conflicts between factions with objectivity and impartiality. The folks in the 18^th century had justice to varying degrees. In the 21^st century, we have more. It takes time to establish Justice. Are women better off today? Minorities? Immigrants? I believe that the answer would be a resounding “yes” across the board. We are still “in process” but we are moving in the right direction. Next year I have confidence that there will not be more civil rights abuses, but less. The progress is not as quick as we always want, but it is quantifiable.

Insure domestic Tranquility – Laws are in place to protect We the People, our families and property. Law enforcement provides accountability. We want punishments to fit the crimes, safeguards to ensure that the innocent are not punished nor the guilty acquired. Is our judicial system perfect? No. But it is “more perfect.” It, too, is fluid, researched and dissected to find better methods. There may be cries to “defund,” but it was the Constitution’s framers who took on the responsibility. A nation with no police, or undervalued police, is not a nation with domestic tranquility.

Provide for the common defense – We the People have reason to be proud of our military. The world looks to us to protect them. We’ve overstepped at times, suffering great losses. But we have mostly avoided the need to draft unwilling soldiers because of our excellence of training, resources, and benefits. We the People have not endured war on our own soil in many years. Few countries have been so blessed.

Promote the general Welfare – This broad stroke takes in the collective desire that We the People enjoy health, peace, morality, and safety. Numerous government agencies work to that end, but citizens must be active participants in the process. We pay taxes. We fill out the census questionnaire. We vote for leaders who, we hope, will facilitate programs effectively for the greater good without causing undue hardship on their constituents.

Secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity – The Constitution knows its end game. Often we focus on isolated issues, certain that their successes or failures will be the all-deciding factors. While every individual of We the People is important, the big picture is equally important. Liberty is indeed a blessing; sometimes we must sacrifice today to secure that blessing for tomorrow.

Do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America - The United States is, relatively speaking, one of the new kids on the block as far as sovereign entities go. Growing pains are only natural. Perhaps today’s turmoil clutters the headlines, but when the U.S. is as old as, say, Great Britain or China, today’s tweet or cause du jour (however important now) will hardly cause a ripple of historic interest. While many seem hell-bent to divide us in however many ways possible, “We the People” will have the last say.

But We the People need to vote. We need to stop getting our information from memes and sound bytes and social media. We need to ask questions and research. We need to realize how easily we can be manipulated by emotion or bias and, armed with this awareness, do whatever we can so that we are not. We need to be willing to lay aside a long-held notion or belief when presented with logic and truth to the contrary. We have to lay down prejudices and assumptions. I, for one, am weary of being lumped in with everyone of a certain color or religion or gender or political persuasion. I do not think and act as all other white people, or all Christians, or all women, or all non-partisan voters. Whatever the labels and categories of We the People -- and acknowledging the importance of the collective -- we are also individuals.

This November we face, perhaps, the most important election of this nation's history. Because of the increased speed of information, the tremendous impact of the Internet, we can ill afford a casual treatment of words and speech and behavior. The next president of the United States has more potential influence for either good or bad than any previous president since George Washington.

At the same time, We the People must not lose sight of the fact that whoever lives at 1600 Pennsylvania in our nation's capital is there because of us. We vote them in, we vote them out. They are there for a minimum of four years, a maximum of eight. They are temporary. We the People are here to stay.

Twenty Years

2020-08-21T11:00:00.000-07:00

Adam Rogers Gillette
5/22/84 - 8/22/00

Twenty years. For some, that's a lifetime, but for most of us, it marks a coming of age. For some, retirement after twenty years marks a successful career. A twentieth wedding anniversary is, these days, a real accomplishment.

August 19, 2000, began as a good day. My son Adam, 16, flopped on the bed beside me and ran lines with me for an upcoming play. He needed to take his computer for a repair, then headed to work as a restaurant busser on Hutchinson Island off Fort Pierce, Florida. He enjoyed his job and told me to always tip the server 20%, because it had to be divvied up with other staff.

Our daughter Becky was visiting, leaving that night after we celebrated our other daughter's birthday. Terri had just turned 21, so it was a big deal. We had dinner where my mother, Jane Pendergraft, was playing piano at Out-of-Bounds. It was a special evening. Becky drove north; the rest of us headed home.

In the wee hours of Sunday, August 20, 2000, Adam had worked late, driven a co-worker home and (if memory serves) had dropped him off somewhere. Driving home, something went wrong. Along US. 1, his front right tire went off the shoulder. When he turned the wheel to the left to return all four tires to the highway, his car spun out of control close to what is now Dyer Chevrolet (formerly Bill Shultz Chevrolet).

A driver coming from the opposite direction saw the erratic headlights of a car spinning and called 911. Adam's car flipped and landed on its roof with such force that he was ejected out the rear window. His head and one arm took the brunt of impact. He never regained conciousness, but that driver did what he could by calling. Twenty years later, I am sure he remembers that night. I hope he is well.

Two young women on their way home from a party stopped and talked to him until the ambulance arrived. They showed up at the hospital, too. Twenty years later, I'm sure they remember that night, too. I hope they are well.

We got a call from my brother-in-law Stacy, who had retired from the St. Lucie County Fire Department. Someone had heard the Gillette name on the scanner and called him, but we didn't know anything. Shortly after that, however, we had a call from a police officer at the local hospital. "Is it bad?" I asked.

"You need to come now," he said. Twenty years later, in his line of work, that officer has doubtless made other similar calls, has seen trauma of all sorts. With today's social climate, many officers are leaving law enforcement altogether. I hope he is well. I hope he knows how much I appreciate his insistence on speed.

When we arrived at the hospital, Adam filled the emergency room bed. When had he gotten so tall? At 16, he was a handsome guy with auburn hair and freckles. One of the nurses said, "We knew by looking at him that this was someone who was loved."

Twenty years later, much has changed at the hospital. Then, there was no neurologist on call. Today there is a trauma unit. First responders had not been able to intubate Adam on the highway and so they took him to the closest hospital. We waited for a bed to open up at the nearest trauma center -- Holmes Regional in Melbourne.

(When I eventually got copies of the records, someone had signed that "parent was too upset to sign" off on numerous unnecessary tests that were performed, which was not true. Of course we were upset, but we were all too aware of what was going on. I refused to pay until I got some answers, but in the end, that answer was "When a child comes in, people want to do all they can." They also reduced the bill to something manageable.)

Mark Zook was the Florida Highway Patrol homicide investigator sent to the scene. He is also a friend who fingerprinted Adam as a little homeschooler years before. He told us that Adam might have been changing a CD in his beloved new sound system or scratching his leg. He wasn't driving recklessly or too fast. Alcohol was not a factor.

Twenty years later, Mark has seen more than his share of trauma with FHP and in his own life. His own son Ian died in 2004 in service to our country. His wife Karen does a wonderful work with Gold Star moms, honoring those who have suffered loss. Today, I hope they are well.

The first responders who helped Adam, the nurses, the technicians, the staff at Holmes, Dr. Shepherd -- perhaps they have all retired by now. Once transported to Holmes, Adam was put into a barbituate coma in hopes that the bleeding in his brain would recede. Friends and family flooded the waiting room. One friend called to see what he could do and I asked him to bring coats -- the waiting room was, I'd been told, very cold, and some people were staying many hours. Others made the hour long drive to support me, or my husband, or our other children.Calls came in with words of encouragement. People visited. Usually, a nurse told me, they are more restrictive with ICU patients, but with a teen, they knew his friends might need closure. Allowances were made.

Many of those young people are now married, with families of their own. (I know of three babies born who were named after him, including his nephew Adam II.) Twenty years later, I still hear new stories about Adam occasionally, still read posts from friends and family members who miss him too. Today I hope they are all well.

On August 22, after numerous tests were performed to make absolutely certain he was gone, Adam was declared brain dead. An organ donor, he saved five lives and gave sight to two others. Although I have been in contact with some of the organ recipients, I don't know how they are today with one notable exception: Chuck Daniels, the young man who received Adam's heart, died in 2013. I regret not knowing, because I would have been at his service. I am grateful that he had 13 years in which to become a nurse and get married. I know one thing: it has been seven years since Adam's heart stopped beating, the heart Chuck let me hear again after we met in person. And I know that his mother is still grieving, because I am still grieving after twenty.

In twenty years, so much happens, so many wonderful things! Our family has experienced the joy of births, marriages, graduations, accomplishments, careers. We've met new friends, lived new places, done new things. But along with those joys, there have been losses of many kinds -- divorces, deaths of parents, disappointments, all within the same twenty years.

Such is life. It's a mixed bag. There are good days and bad, sunshine and rain. Nothing, and I mean nothing, has profoundly affected me and our family as much as losing Adam -- although I must interject with my granddaughter Jasmine's wise words to me at about age 3. She caught me crying and asked if it was because of Uncle Adam. "When you lose someone you love, you are sad for a long time," I said. "Silly Nana," she retorted. "We didn't lose him. We know where he is!"

And we do. As Christians, we believe in heaven. We know Adam's character and faith. We "grieve, but not as those who have no hope," as Paul wrote to the Thessalonian church. Hope does not, however, take away the sense of loss. It is just a fact that the young man we love and miss every day of our lives is not present. We can't call him on the phone or listen to him laugh or get a hug in his strong arms.

I have learned a lot in twenty years, much of it because of my son's death. Most importantly, I have learned that if you are settled in your mind and heart that God exists, you're stuck. If you know in your "knower" that there is a God, all the arguments about "a loving God wouldn't do this" or "a just God wouldn't do that" are futile. IF you believe that God exists, he can do whatever the hell he wants to do! He's God. You're not. He doesn't ask for our permission. He doesn't wait until we approve of his plan.

I am stuck. I see evidence of God's existence in nature, in the love and lives of others, throughout history. God doesn't behave the way I want him too, which is strangely comforting. If he did, I would be tempted to think I had created a false belief out of my own desires and expectations. God is not what I wish him to be, and yet he has convinced me that he loves me. That he wants the best for me. That he is in control.

Twenty years later, I still believe this. I don't understand why Adam died at 16, unformed, unfinished, a life unfulfilled. I don't like it. I remind God frequently of this, and yet, as a Christian mother, heaven is the destination I prayed for, for him. For all my children and grandchildren and loved ones. For all my friends and family. That he is there sooner than I anticipated is a hardship for me and for those who also miss him, but not for him. Not for him.

Twenty years. I've held new grandbabies, seen my first grandchild become an adult. Many new firefighters at Indian River State College have benefited from the Adam Gillette Memorial Firefighter scholarship started and continued by the local firefighters union. I've watched as my daughter Becky has become a nurse and expand her family. Daughter Terri has overcome many obstacles in her life, physically and emotionally. Son Caleb is a police lieutenant with a Master's degree. I know that at every birthday party, every ceremony, every wedding, every funeral of their grandparents, every family gathering, every holiday they miss Adam sorely. Then again, it's a daily thing. Sometimes an hourly thing.

But life goes on. It wouldn't honor our memory of Adam or our love for him to let his absence -- however sorely felt -- have a negative effect. People used to say, "I don't know how you do it" to which I thought -- what's the alternative? Become an alcoholic or drug addict to numb myself so I don't feel the pain? I wouldn't be able to feel the love either, then.

What has helped? Talking about Adam, hearing about him from others, writing about him -- these have certainly helped. My faith in a God who loves me so much I can tell him I hate him at times (and I have). The support of so many friends who, hopefully, will never understand what it's like to bury a child, and the support of too many friends who know it well.

Not long after Adam's death, I heard someone say this: Significant loss changes you, and you spend the rest of your life finding out who you are now. Twenty years ago, I had a significant loss that is incomparable to any other event in my life. And it did, indeed, change me. I am not as nice a person as I once was. I am more impatient with trivialities and complaints. I am not as empathetic with people who are upset about things I consider unimportant. I feel as though I have gone through something far worse than coronavirus or social unrest or political polarization and sometimes I just want to scream at people to shutthefuck up about things that, in the eternal scope of things, don't even register as a blip on the screen.

I'm working on that.

Twenty years later, I have babbled on and on, but what do I really want to get across to you? It's 2020, the year we have grown to loathe with its constant turmoil in nature, in society, everywhere we look. I would say this: There are not all that many people who truly love any one of us. Truly, deeply. Our lives do not really matter in a profound way to more than a relative handful. Think of the billions of people on the planet -- who will miss you when you're gone? Who will still cry when you've been gone twenty years?

Adam's life mattered, and continues to matter. His love for me, his constant good cheer (once he outgrew his temper!). The world...MY world... was better because he was in it. And now he isn't, not in the same way.

So I would tell you that if you are blessed with someone who loves you...if you are important to someone, whether a parent or sibling or friend or lover or other family member ... please don't do things, or say things, that will push them away. You can't afford to lose someone like that if only because there are so few of them! Your life will be the lesser for that loss. Adam loved me - of that I am certain. He loved his father, his brother, his sisters, his grandparents and cousins, his friends. The "not-here-ness" of that love has affected us all.

Sometimes it is beyond our control -- we try to stay close and our feelings aren't wanted or reciprocated. That hurts, I know. But look at all the others who DO love us back! What a gift they are! Cherish them always.

Twenty years later, I am hurting. I am crying. I am wallowing a bit more than usual. But I am also so grateful for having sixteen years with a remarkable young man. And even more than that, I am grateful for the belief that I will see him once again.

I have hoped that many people are well today, this day before the twentieth anniversary of Adam's death, a temporary change of location that profoundly changed me and everyone who loved him, who love him still. And I do hope they are well.

I know that Adam is.

A Matter of Words

2020-01-01T16:58:00.003-08:00

For what it's worth (get it?) I am embarrassed by the fact that it has been over a year since I posted anything here. Why have a blog if one does not use it as a platform for expressing one's views? Have I not had anything to say in the course of a full year?

Of course I have. And I have said it, in bits and pieces, on social media, during speeches at Toastmasters, in articles or poems I have written, in a manuscript, in writing homework or exercises at the writers' group I enjoy monthly. I had quite a lot to say at my father's funeral. I've been in a few plays, which doesn't really count since what I had to say then was written by others. I have said even more during countless phone conversations. I have emailed. Texted. Written ACTUAL LETTERS AND CARDS -- I know, a dying art, but one I still think is important.

My point is ... we all have something to say. Not just the pundits. Not just the talking heads. Not just the celebrities and politicians. Currently I am teaching high school sophomores for a teacher on maternity leave. Most of them do not like the grammar portion of the curriculum. Why is this important? Because they have a story to tell. Their thoughts and views matter, so the way in which they express themselves both verbally and on paper matters.

Your story matters. Everyone's does. It has been my privilege to help others with their personal stories -- some factual memoirs, others the products of their imaginations -- and tidy things up a bit to the point that they were published. It is always challenging to get inside someone else's head and write (correctly) what he or she wanted to express. More on that in a bit.

One day in the mid-1980s I was standing in my kitchen -- a young mother of four who scarcely had time to eat some days, let alone write -- when my parents walked in with an IBM Selectric typewriter. My mother worked for a CPA firm that was upgrading its equipment; she had bought one of the old ones at a great price. I started crying. I had had, at that point and several years earlier, two or three things printed. I wrote something for the church bulletin. I kept a journal. But this incredible gift spoke volumes: We believe in you.

Some years later, but many, many years ago -- 1988, to be exact -- I attended a writers' conference in Arizona. I'd never been to one. I'd never been away from my family for that long, practically a week! I hesitate to say it was a life-changing experience, because the phrase raises high expectations, but when I look back at that time, and what it eventually meant, I think the words are accurate. My life did indeed change because of the words of two men, Jamie Buckingham and David Manuel.

As a teenager, I had the privilege of hearing Jamie preach at his church in Melbourne, and when he would visit Fort Pierce, but his is a legacy that reaches many times around the globe -- he helped Corrie ten Boom write her story (Tramp for the Lord) and Kathryn Kuhlman's. He penned many humorous and insightful Christian books such as The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Make You Miserable. At the conference, one of the things that stuck with me was spoken to the entire group: "If I preach a good sermon on Sunday morning, I may impact a few hundred people. If I write a book, I can reach so many more." In his case, he reached millions more.

Jamie wrote 22 books of his own, and another 24 for others, among them Nicky Cruz's Run, Baby, Run was a cult classic of the Jesus Movement; Bill Nelson's Mission; and Jeannie C. Riley's From Harper Valley to the Mountaintop. He wrote other people's stories because they had something to say, but may not have been as gifted with the time, talent, or energy to put the words down on paper in a cohesive form. The world would have been poorer had he not been willing to not only put his own thoughts down, but those of others.

What the men said about ghostwriting, or as-told-to writing struck a chord: Everyone has a story to tell, but not everyone can write it. There aren't enough writers willing to share other people's stories.

I didn't know David Manuel prior to the conference, nor had I read any of his books (most notably The Light and the Glory which he wrote with Peter Marshall). But I was in his "group" at the conference. and I've never forgotten his encouragement.

The deal was this: conference attendees were asked to write a short story based on a few verses of scripture, intentionally narrow. They wanted to see what we would come up with, given very few parameters. Frankly, they didn't expect much, but the exercise would give them an idea of what they had to work with.

Somewhere around the beginning of the conference, they asked us why we were there. When it was my turn to answer, I said something along the lines of, "I love to write, but I'm not sure what I should do with it. Maybe I should write letters to the editor, or words of encouragement to others. Maybe I should try to be published. I'm here to find out."

At the end of the conference, during one of the small group session, David Manuel remembered what I had said. "You wanted to know what to do, and now you do." He'd been surprised and pleased at my short story because it had taken a narrow verse or two and expanded into a real narrative with characters and layers, intrigue and romance. David Manuel, published author, liked what I had written!

That encouragement gave me the confidence to try harder, write more, take more chances, weather the inevitable rejections. A few years later, I was writing weekly newspaper columns for an editor who was equally as encouraging and instructive. More than once I was called into his office to discuss why something hadn't worked, but he was always constructive rather than dismissive. He was my first editor but also the first person to relate to me as a writer, period. He didn't know me, but he knew writing, he knew newspapers, and he knew how to manage people.

After a few years, other editors coming and going (not all as helpful as that first!), I was no longer writing regularly. Without a deadline, it's easy to let things slide. I started this blog. I wrote a book that did not, I'm afraid, make any bestseller lists (available as an e-book at smashwords.com though!). I wrote and illustrated a children's book (She-Bear in the Beautiful Garden). Guest columns. Started writing for a local group of magazines. Have a poetry blog, in addition to this one. Working on a fiction manuscript, guided by solid input from fellow writers. And now, occasionally editing other writers' books, telling someone else's story the way Jamie and David had encouraged.

Back to my point ... way up there, I know ... we all have something to say. If you write it down, the audience may grow. That's both a positive and a negative, as some politicians have found out -- there's real staying power to words. Negative writing can come back and bite you! But I have wonderful emails that I've kept for ten years, because they meant so much to me, and still do. I have cards and letters. Words matter.

Your words matter. It's a new year, writers (that would be, hopefully, everyone reading this). Write a comment on that report when you hand it back. Post something meaningful on Facebook. Tuck a note inside your child's lunchbox. Send a distant relative a card. Write to that inmate. Rant about something in a letter to the editor or (better still) publicly thank someone for a job well done. Write a poem. Jot down that story of something funny that happened in the service. Pour out your heart in anguish, retelling a time of grief or trauma (it will help, I promise you).

Maybe your writing will not be for a major publisher. Maybe your books won't reach the kind of audience Jamie Buckingham's did, but maybe they will! Your writing can impact someone. It can even, and perhaps especially, impact you in ways you might not imagine: changing you, growing you, softening you, honing your thoughts and ideas and dreams.

My sister sent me a card one time that had printed across the top: (don't forget TO WRITE). Under it, in her own lovely handwriting, she'd added Please don't forget to write! There was more, but not a lot more. Her brief encouragement now has eight tiny holes from where it has been moved around the corkboard in my office and skewered with multiple pushpins years after it was given. Her words mattered then, and they matter now.

Words matter. Your words matter. So..... don't forget to write!

Hope in the Flames

2018-12-26T13:10:00.000-08:00

I came across an article today entitled "Find Your Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin, in Issue One of Simplify magazine. Rubin writes," My college roommate was a dedicated journal keeper. She once told me, 'Every once in a while I have a big insight into myself or have a major epiphany about life. The thing is, when I look back in my journals, I realize that I had exactly the same idea a few years ago—but I forgot it.'"

I had, in fact, a similar revelation, but with dramatically different results.

Our family spent a year in India working with Youth With A Mission, a Christian organization with bases throughout the world. After training at the Lindale, Texas base, we'd gone on an outreach to Mexico City after their earthquake in 1985. We'd been housed in an unfinished hospital building with water so cold in the bathroom's overhead shower, that I got a headache the one time I tried to use it.

After that, we walked, my husband and our four young children, to the banyo once a week for hot showers. On the way, we'd buy pastries. I homeschooled the older children, my husband was on a construction team, I helped with meals. It was a great experience.

The following January, we embarked on an even bigger adventure. It is amazing now, post-911, to remember the bags of sharp tools we took on board the airplane that would take us to the other side of the planet! Four children, age two to eight, living in a foreign country, far from everything familiar.

For almost a year, we lived in one village, then another. We went on an outreach to northern India, where we visited the foothills of the Himalayas. We took rickshaw rides, bus rides, train rides. Our oldest, who turned nine, remembers the most about that year, but we gained so much, even as we slept on a concrete floor, had no running water, ate simply.

All along that incredible journey, I kept journals. Many journals. By kerosene lamplight if the power had gone out during a brown-out, or sitting by the pond watching the kids swim, I journaled. In detail, whether writing about making love on the mat when we knew the children were sound asleep, or a visiting teacher's insight, or an argument that stung to the core.

Our year was supposed to be the first of a lifteime as overseas missionaries, but that was not what happened. Back in the States, we learned that our oldest daughter's medical condition warranted Western medical treatment. We took it as a sign that we should remain here.

During the following three decades, we went through experiences much harder than that concrete floor, more challenging than adapting to a meager diet. It wasn't just the trials and tribulations every family faces as their children grow up. It wasn't just the challenges every marriage faces, or the way life meanders away from expectations and dreams. Issues. Death. Sorrow. Debt. Disease. Aging parents. Job upheavals. All of the above.

Of course, there was also happiness, and growth, and abiding joy. And faith, which kept everything in perspective, that assured me all would be well, that there was purpose, a plan.

Then when our youngest son Adam died in 2000 following a car accident, I sensed -- deep, deep inside -- that as sad as I was, one day joy would return. I didn't know it would be 10 years. Faith was not shaken, but joy was. Moments of joy at graduations or babies or personal triumphs or holidays kept me going, but the overwhelming reacquaintance with joy as a constant companion, beneath whatever else life threw my way ... that was, and is, amazing.

At a writer's group I began attending, we read Writing Down the Soul by Janet Conner, and I found myself thinking about journaling again. I didn't, and don't, journal often, but I was reminded of the old India journals stored in a cedar chest.

One evening, I took out the journals alone and began reading. I skipped pages, skipped months, smiled as I saw thoses faces again, heard the lovely cadence of dialects and the ever-present beeping of horns in the city. I was also appalled at what I saw threaded throughout that wonderful year in India. Many of the same issues I might journal about today, I mentioned then. Some of the same negative aspects of my life. The same heartbreaks and questions. I could have written some of this yesterday, I thought.

I wept against the day my children might find the journals after my death. True, they might understand me better, but I would've already passed on, so what would that accomplish? I didn't want them to see, there in black and white, the undercurrents I had struggled with as they grew up, not without knowing all of the sides of all the stories. And that would be impossible.

And too, I remembered the ruthless room cleaning I had done just before my husband proposed. I had thrown away things other guys had given me, starting new, starting fresh, turning a corner. Within days, we were engaged.

I needed to turn a corner again, if only in my heart. I made a decision.

By then, it was dark. I took the journals to a small fire pit outside behind our house, along with lighter fluid and a lighter, and I burned them to ash. I sat there, poking the flames with a stick, until nothing remained that was readable.

When I told my writing group what I had done, some of them were aghast. Your writing! It's gone!

For me, though, it was cathartic, a symbolic act that the ways in which I had settled, the ways in which I had cheated myself out of happiness, the lessons it had taken me so long to learn but finally had...it was a dramatic gesture, but a grand one.

We talk about "burning bridges behind you" as if it's always a bad thing, but we forget that some bridges shouldn't be built. Some bridges should only go one way. At the time, none of that was in my thinking, and I don't even care if the analogy fits my actions. I didn't try to analyze why I needed to burn the journals, I just knew it would be a good thing.

I wept a little at the loss, yes, but there was hope in the flames.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2018

Ullage

2018-07-10T14:36:00.000-07:00

I attend, for the most part faithfully, a writers' group called Use Your Words. The Inner Truth Project, an outreach to victims of sexual abuse and violence, hosts us, but we are a group of women and man (occasionally more than one) who share about current projects, do homework, respond to writing prompts, and eat chocolate. Sometimes a guest facilitator or speaker runs the show, but most of the time, sweet Wendy Dwyer keeps us on track, or at least sort of. Writers, nay, women, often get sidetracked.

The homework assignment for the last session was this: Write about an area where you'd like to do better. I left it until the day of, which happened to also be the day I got a Dictionary Word of the Day: ullage. Could be the amount by which contents fall short of filling a container, could be the quantity remaining in the container that has lost part of its contents by evaporation, leakage, or use.

How appropriate for the assignment, I thought. The ullage of our lives could be said to be that which needs more work to fill us completely up, round out our character, etc. And at the same time it could also refer to a measure of what has been used up between our birth until this point.

The irony of one word meaning both things is that we are containers. As babies, we are mostly full. Fill us with joy and love during our infant years. Think of all the nurturing we receive when people hold us as if we are worth all the gold in the world. In that moment, we are precious. Fragile. Complete strangers will sniff at us, as if faced with expensive ambrosia. Our skin is stroked gently. We are bounced up and down rhythmically and immediately when grandmothers (not necessarily our own) get to hold us.

Early on, then, many of us are full. Over time, however, we leak, the holes and cracks we get in our containers the result of stress and strain or outright damage. We give of ourselves, using our storehouse of joy and love and patience on others because it feels good to us, or it's the right thing to do, or to get something in return. Sometimes we do, sometimes it's from a different source than the one we expected or thought we needed. We are neglected and the good, the love, the feeling of being in sync with ourselves and with the universe begins to evaporate.

How to make up the ullage? Where we actually lack – in knowledge, needed skills, hobbies to embrace – we can learn. We can increase the contents of our vessel. But we can never stop giving out, either. There will always be the ullage, because we will have always lost part of the contents. The trick is how we lose it. As with so many things, the choice is ours.

I don't want to evaporate. I don't want my love or joy or peace to respond to the heat of stress or anger by vanishing, little molecules of me breaking off and being swallowed by the negative force coming against me. I would say this even more strongly: I refuse to evaporate. There are people who ignore me, or neglect me, or act as if what I want or what I say is not important. Whatever. I refuse to go up in their puffs of prideful smoke. I'm here, and until God calls me home, I'm here to stay. Ignore me at your peril – or at your preference. I'm still here.

I also don't want to leak through rifts of unforgiveness and bitterness I've allowed to develop and widen. When you ignore a crack too long, there will be a break eventually. A shattering. Spillage that is difficult, if not impossible, to sop up. Never does it all get put back together as it was before. Not to say we can't heal, we can and do. But the fault lines remain, even if we find ways to hide them. They say it is easier to build men than to repair them, which is true. When a tiny crack appears, I want to address it. Forgive the one who hurt me, or ask the one I hurt to forgive me. Keep short accounts, in other words. When we don't forgive, we give our offender power over us, a power that he or she doesn't deserve.

The best way to have ullage, I am thinking, is to use what we have, and find a reliable source for replenishment. Spiritually, the source will be God, not a religious thing but one of relationship with someone who has proven to be trustworthy and faithful. We only scratch the surface, any one of us, in true understanding of how unfathomable the depths of his love for us are. Fortunately, we don't have to understand his love to accept it.

Back to the writers' group assignment, though. What area would I like to improve? Beauty. Not physical beauty, although I definitely need to stay on top of things like my weight and health, the message I communicate to others through my appearance – do I value myself in this moment? Am I confident? Do I feel beautiful, and if so, why? Does it depend too much on this or the other, or another person, or can I hearken back to that moment in my infancy when all I knew, from everyone I encountered, was acceptance and love and affirmation? That all-encompassing awareness of love was the first awareness we experienced. Life has a way of throwing up roadblocks, but knowing we are loved is still important.

As a pre-teen, I remember reading something in a book titled Calico Palace. It was about the gold rush days in California, but what I remember was a man telling a woman that "every woman is as beautiful as one man thinks she is." That's always stuck with me. You could pick that apart and analyze the psychology of it, the political incorrectness, but it is part of who I am today.

Physical beauty – or knowing that we are confident and attractive and enough for whatever comes our way – that's one thing. But where I want to grow is another. Creating an atmosphere of beauty around me. Beautiful words. Beautiful artwork. Beautiful smells and tastes. Recently, I had the privilege of attending an artist's private showing in her home. Everywhere I turned, there was something clever and creative, something that said "A clever and creative woman resides here." It was invigorating. I felt like a little sponge, soaking up the artistic atmosphere.

My world is too silent. Too drab. Often I am a quiet English countryside when there is a touch of morning fog and a lone whippoorwill sings out now and then. There is a time for that. But I also want to be a raucous Calcutta marketplace full of overpowering color and spice and heat, a tabla and sitar speeding up their beat and melody in the background as my heart is beating faster and faster, exhilarated by life.

In what area of life would I like to do better? In living, really living, every moment. There is beauty inherent in life, all around us. I want to do better at sensing life, enjoying life, and celebrating its beauty.

A Temporary Separation

2018-01-23T06:15:00.000-08:00

My mother, Laura Jane Rogers Pendergraft, born on October 17, 1933, was named for her grandmother Laura Ellen Whitley -- I was named for her as well. She passed away January 12 a little over a year after being diagnosed with lung cancer. I was so surprised when we got the report. Mama hadn't smoked heavily ever, and hadn't smoked at all in half a century. She was a heart patient with Parkinson's, so those conditions were more expected to be the cause of her eventual end, but Mama didn't always follow expectations.

She went by Jane, but I only called her Mama. As my sister Rebecca (whom I only call Becky) shared at her memorial service, Mother sounds formal and distant. There are grown children who still call their mothers Mommy. Both our sets of kids refer to us as Mom. But in true Southern tradition, Mama was Mama.

When she was born at home, it was not an easy delivery. Growing up, we heard ... many times ... how the doctor used forceps to literally pull her out. which supposedly accounted for her long neck. Our grandfather said she screamed for three months. It's a wonder we wanted to have babies! This reminds me of something else - "Twilight Zone" was considered too dark for children in our household, and probably came on after our bedtimes. But the next morning at breakfast, Mama would tell us in great detail of the previous evening's episode, so vivid that we could relive every dark and scary moment.

Mama was a bit of a tom boy, but early on, she showed exceptional musical talent. At only 14, she marched into the local radio station and asked for her own show. She was given a spot in conjunction with a local minister, a Rev. Koestline, and she played the organ, specially trained by the organ company for three months. She played for school functions and the Rotary Club. She was also smart as a whip, valedictorian for the class of 1951 and voted as Most Likely to Succeed and Most Talented by her classmates at Albemarle High School. Later, I remember her sighing that she had more common sense than the psychologists she was secretary to at Western Carolina College when we were little, and we never doubted the truth of her statement.

Mama had entered nurses' training, after high school but left before graduating. Then, you couldn't be married in the program and she was discouraged from the long, hard hours taking care of lots of old men, she said, who tried to embarrass the young innocent students. Working at Starnes' Jewelers back home in Albemarle, she met a handsome red-headed teacher who came into the store. He was chaperoning a dance at her old high school, and asked her to be his date. At the dance, everyone parted just like in the movies she loved to watch every Saturday as a child, so that Herb and Jane could take the floor.

They married on December 26, 1953, and stayed married 64 years. They were not always easy years, especially when they lost their third baby, but the two of them taught us a lot about commitment, sacrifice, and carrying on.

Mama was a worker. At some point, she had three part-time jobs, or was it four? When we moved to Florida, Mama continued to work, in addition to being church organist or pianist. Her fingers were nimble, whether winning a typing contest or finishing a tax return, whether accompanying a cantata, or adding to the contemporary worship.

One of my most peaceful, early memories is lying in a church pew at the Methodist church in Cullowhee, North Carolina. The church was empty except for Mama and me as she practiced for the coming Sunday. Her music was flawless, and lying there, listening to her, I felt close to heaven. I think it was an accurate sensation.

Mama's nimble fingers helped her playing cards too. That era's version of gaming involved sitting tother around a table, talking and laughing while Canasta or Shanghai was played. She never, ever "let us" win, not so much a sign of her competitiveness as, I think, wanting us to be prepared for the realities of life: Whatever you receive, you have to earn.

When we were growing up, we watched one channel together, took road trips on the weekends together, went to see the relatives at Christmas together - her parents, Daddy's family, her sister "Susie Q," all the nieces and nephews. We read books together, went to church together. Rarely, to a movie or out to eat, two very big deals.

If I were to boil my childhood down to its core, I'd say that the two main things Mama and Daddy taught Becky and me were that there was nothing we couldn't accomplish, and that no matter what, they'd always love us. The first was perhaps a form of child abuse - who can live up to that?! - but the second always caught us when we failed.

One of my favorite Mama stories is the night we sat down to supper, David and I, our oldest daughter Terri and her toddler Jasmine. Before we said grace, Jasmine piped up. "I think we need to pray for GG." GG was Mama's nickname celebrating her role as great-grandmother. The grandchildren had called her Grambo or Grandma Graft.

It's important to understand that GG had babysat for Jasmine that day. The WHOLE day. When I asked Jasmine why, she said, "All day long GG kept saying 'Help me, Lord.'" Mama was famous for those mutters, simultaneously quick prayers for grace as well as pointed acknowledgment that things weren't going as she wished.

Mama was capable and strong, and a little, shall we say, controlling? She knew the best way to do some things, and felt a responsibility to share it, because she loved us and wanted us to ALSO know the best way to do it! I have, many times, heard her correct nurses or hospital staff about cleanliness. Because she and Daddy lost their son to a staph infection at a hospital, she was obsessive about germs. To her dying day, she would not let her bare feet touch the floor, at least by choice. That was Mama - refusing treatment to kill cancer, but worried that she might pick up something from eating cheese that might have gone bad in the refrigerator. A complicated woman, in other words.

Even in her last days, Mama would rally for a few seconds to tell us that they were out of paper towels, or remind us of an upcoming appointment. She didn't give up control easily. She was a caregiver who sometimes wished someone would take care of HER. God seemed to grant that request at the end of her life. Treasure Coast Hospice and Lake Forest Park Senior Living staff provided consistent and compassion care for her, for which the family is very grateful. That last week, though, when Ashley, one of the hospice nurses asked her about something, Mama didn't even open her eyes. She was too weak to shrug, but she simply said "Whatever." THAT was as significant a change to the nurse as her not wanting to eat, or her falling blood pressure. Mama was not a "whatever" kind of gal most of the time.

It was a relatively long and slow decline, going from getting tired on the way to the dining room, to needing someone to push her there in a wheelchair, to not leaving her room, to not leaving her bed. It's hard to watch someone so vital, become so weak. It was hard especially, I think, on the grandchildren, who had known her as the silly Grambo making scary faces or giving piggy-back rides. She stopped caring about wearing her wig or make-up, or was (more likely) unwilling to inconvenience anyone by asking for help. My son told her one time that she was the consummate Southern lady, make-up always perfect. That pleased her greatly, and to let that go was just another indication of how determined she was to be done with all this nonsense and get on to glory.

Mama was resolute in her decision to donate her body to science. A heart patient, she also had Parkinson's and cancer. When her grandson, my youngest son Adam, died following a car accident, he saved five lives by being an organ donor. She decided she could help too. We don't know at this time how her donation to a group called Science Care was used, but we're at peace knowing she did exactly what she wanted. Eventually, her body will be cremated, and Science Care will send us the remains. Honestly, we're not sure what we'll do with them then, but Mama did say NO WATER. She can still get us to do what she wants, even from heaven.

One of Mama's greatest regrets was not finishing nursing school. She was so proud when "little" Becky, our youngest daughter, became an RN. But she was proud of all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She was what Joyce Landorf Heatherley called "balcony people" in her delightful little book with the same title. Had geography and then her health allowed it, she would have been at every soccer match, every football game, every school program, every celebration. She was thrilled to attend her grandchildren's graduations, promotions, weddings, to be at the hospital for births. She loved playing with kids herself, making faces, dressing up, having them sit by her at the piano. She saved every picture, every card. She treasured us, her daughters, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. She prayed for us. At her memorial service, I asked those in attendance to really think about that. She prayed for both family and friends, so virtually everything each of us encountered or endured or triumphed over, in the midst of every good decision or horrible mistake, Mama's prayers were right there in the midst.

In her obituary, it was stated that she encouraged everyone she met. She once said she had a "kissing ministry," the perpetual loving mother finding new children to support each day. She called CNAs by name and blew kisses to ladies across the dining room at the assisted living facility. She kept photographs of children whose names elude us. She loved. We didn't always appreciate that, because it motivated her to correct and instruct when we didn't necessarily want correction or instruction, but that's what mamas do.

In her final weeks, Mama said she wished she had something profound to say. There were family situations she always thought that if she'd just said this, or just said that, maybe she could fix it. She was a fixer. I'd remind her that some things may not get fixed, this side of heaven, but we could trust God with the details. She hoped that at the very least, the unity of family and friends at her life's end, would start a move in the right direction. Several things happened that seem to indicate that she, once again, got what she wanted -- good decisions, a softening of hearts, rekindling of friendships and other relationships as we stood around after her service talking of old times, looking at photographs, hugging one another in shared emotion.

Mama was raised in a church-going family, and rededicated her life to Christ as an adult, always faithful in attendance and service until her health prevented it. But even then, a pastor who held services at the facility where she lived said that she would challenge and bless him when he visited. She'd ask deep questions, quote verses of scripture that were especially meaningful to her. She trusted her heavenly Father with her life, as well as her death, although she was getting increasingly surprised, even disappointed, every morning she woke up here. She was so ready to be reunited with friends and loved ones. To see her baby, to see our son again, and her father (George Adam Rogers), for whom both boys were named. Her mother Polly (Pauline Whitley) and sister Marie Tucker. Friends from Lake Forest Park who went before her -- Julius, Howard -- friends from the Lunch Bunch who'd gone to school with her in Albemarle.

When she was diagnosed with cancer, she put in her order with the Lord to go in her sleep. Doctors had explained some of the possible scenarios, and she said no thank you. Like almost always, she got her way. We will miss her, every day. Some will regret not having visited more, or telling her they loved her one more time. When you think about it, no one ever says, "I wish I hadn't gone over as much as I did. I wish I hadn't spent so much time with someone who has passed." I encourage those people to stop. Life is much too short, no matter how long it lasts, to live with regrets. Instead, let that wistful and wishful thinking motivate us to visit more, love more, share our lives more.

As people of faith, we believe that this is only a temporary separation. We believe in eternity, in heaven. And if we believe that, then the transition to the "other side" is a promotion, a graduation, a healing to beat all healings. C.S. Lewis wrote that when people die, infants continue to grow until they reach their prime age, and the elderly get younger until they do also. If that is true, then Mama is now slender and beautiful with a full head of dark hair, unfettered by age and infirmity and devices to help her walk.

In Mama's senior year book, each graduate picked a phrase to go with their list of accomplishments at school. Mama's choice was a paraphrase from poet Bessie Anderson Stanley: She has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.

I think that sums up Mama's life nicely.

A link to Mama's obituary and a guest book may be seen here: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/tcpalm/obituary.aspx?n=laura-jane-pendergraft-rogers&pid=187883633

A Different Kind of Christmas Eve Story

2017-12-24T17:21:00.001-08:00

It is, perhaps, a different kind of Christmas Eve story, but one with a definite link to what we celebrate...on the wrong date, at the wrong time of year. Jesus, son of Mary, Son of God, son (supposed) of the carpenter Joseph, who was engaged to Mary at the time of her conception -- even for an unbeliever, it's fascinating reading.

There are two genealogies given in the gospels. The familiar Christmas story, read in Christian schools, in churches, by firelight in countless homes each year...this appears in the gospel of Luke. Scholars believe that the genealogy it contains is that of Mary, while Matthew's traces the lineage of Joseph.

Why does it matter? The Messiah's birth was foretold in the Old Testament. Micah 5:2 says “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.” Scholars (again) connect this prophecy to Jesus.

Luke tells us that there was a census. Joseph had already decided not to divorce Mary after an angel told him not to (smart man) and had to go to his family's home of Bethlehem, under Roman law. Mary's lineage was also from the house of David the king, but women weren't regarded as all that important at the time. The head of the household was what mattered, and so Joseph and Mary traveled to Bethlehem where, the story goes, the time came for her to give birth to a very special baby, conceived of the Holy Spirit.

For the prophecy to be fulfilled, Mary had to be betrothed to a man of the house of David, even though his bloodline wasn't, technically, the highest priority. Mary is venerated, even worshipped by some, and by all accounts a remarkable young woman...but she also couldn't be betrothed to just anyone. Had to be form the house of David, so that he'd have to take her to Bethlehem. Well, you get the idea.

Matthew's lineage, written to Jewish readers, includes -- amazingly --- four women, and not the ones you might expect. No mention of Eve, the mother of us all, or Sarah, the mother of the Jewish race. No Rebekah, the mother of Jacob, whose twelve sons became the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Matthew included the names of Tamar, a Jewish daughter-in-law who posed as a prostitute to get pregnant by her father-in-law; Rahab, an ACTUAL prostitute who saved Jewish spies in Jericho; Ruth, whose "Whither thou goest" speech is often quoted at weddings but was spoken to the mother of her dead husband; and then...there's Bathsheba, who isn't even named.

She gets credited as the "wife of Uriah." Whaaaat?

The story is not a sweet one. In a nutshell, King David sent the army out but stayed behind, saw Bathsheba bathing on the rooftop, sent for her and got her pregnant, invited her husband (and one of his esteemed Mighty Men) Uriah home for R&R to cover his actions. Uriah wouldn't sleep with his wife while his men were embattled, so David sent him back to war with instructions to place good ole Uriah on the front lines, hoping for his imminent death. Uriah did indeed die; David married Bathsheba, the baby died and David repented. David and Bathsheba lived, if not happily ever after, long enough to have Solomon, who became king, was regarded as the wisest man on earth at the time, and who built the Temple.

That's a lot of history, but at the very least it shows that the Bible is not dull. Why bring this up now? Because when Bathsheba's story is mentioned, it is always (in my experience) slanted. David, hero of the Goliath incident, writer of Psalms, husband of many...he is shown to be the lustful, powerful man who wrongly sends Uriah to his death to cover his adultery. That's fair.

Bathsheba doesn't get a lot of mention at all, other than as sort of a victim of circumstances. Uriah is praised as a man of honor.

That's not the way I see it.

Uriah was one of David's Mighty Men. Respected by his soldiers. Respected by his king (up to a point). But, really? He refused to sleep with his wife because his men were in the field? What did that communicate to his wife, and was it a pattern she had been living with for years?

No wonder she went to the palace when David called her.

I'm not saying she was justified, or that David wasn't wrong. I'm just pointing out that back when Joshua was preparing the Israelites for war, God told him to send home anyone who'd just been married, so he could enjoy his wife. A man is supposed to be intimate with his wife. A wife is supposed to be intimate with her husband. If one of them refuses, no one should be surprised when things take a different direction.

Uriah would have been better off to have slept with his wife and returned to battle happier and more refreshed. Would he have died anyway? No doubt -- otherwise, Solomon wouldn't have been born. Had David not called for Bathsheba after the rooftop bathing...had he not gotten her pregnant...had nothing wrong transpired...I'll go out on a limb and say I think Uriah would have still died in battle, David would have still married Bathsheba, and they would have still had Solomon. Without all the condemnation and conviction and grief.

Maybe Bathsheba had had all the neglect she could handle. Maybe she heard that David was in the habit of strolling on his rooftop at a certain hour. Maybe she planned the whole thing. Maybe she hoped that something would jolt her brave, strong husband out of his self-imposed, single-minded focus on Duty and remind him of his responsibility to her. We don't know.

But I like the fact that Bathsheba, even if she isn't called by her own name, gets a little press in the gospel of Matthew. She was a black mark on the beloved King David's reputation, but she didn't put it there all by herself. David was a participant. And so was Uriah.

Fort Pierce artist
Helen Terry's
beautiful "This I Do For You."

I especially like the fact that Matthew lets the world know this: even the worst of the worst, according to polite society, are included in the family of Jesus. There are those who give the world the impression they have to clean up their acts, their faces, and their vocabulary before they are welcome at church, but Jesus came for the world. Warts and all. Sinful, weak, helpless, hopeless, labeled as unfit and unloved. He was born for them, to make a way for them back to the Father who never stopped loving them. For you. For me.

Red Letter Challenge

2016-07-06T12:23:00.003-07:00

I found this photo on a Bible commentary site
(gracethrufaith.com)
but liked it because Jesus looks a little
like Liam Neeson, doesn't he?

Maybe you've never read the Bible, not cover to cover, not even the shortest verse ("Jesus wept."John 11:35). Maybe you had one of those evangelical check-the-box mornings and are patting yourself on the back for Quiet Time spent in prayer and the Word. Maybe you're a Bible scholar, maybe you think the Bible is one big collection of myths and fairy tales.

I want to challenge you to read something, whether it's for the first time ever or for the umpteenth time since you got saved at a youth meeting in high school. Commonly known as The Sermon on the Mount, it's three chapters in the book of Matthew. Matthew was one of the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew who lived roughly 2000 years ago, who was hated by the religious leaders of his day because he hung out with the outcasts of society and rocked their neat little black-and-white, good-and-evil, heaven-and-hell worlds.

The book of Matthew has 27 chapters. I'm just asking you to read three of them. If you pick up a copy of the Bible somewhere, most of those three chapters may be printed in red ink. Some Bibles print the actual words of Jesus, what he said inside quotation marks, in red. Why? Maybe you assume it is to add significance, as if they needed more. Or so they'd be easier to spot on a page.

Actually, it was a magazine editor's idea. According to Wikipedia, the editor of The Christian Herald in 1899, Louis Klopsch, asked his mentor what he thought of a New Testament with Jesus's words printed in red and his mentor, the Rev. Talmadge, said (I paraphrase) "Well, it couldn't hurt, and it might just help." The Red Letter Bible was born, popular since 1901.

Keep Reading

I challenged you to read Matthew 5-7, and you may be thinking...why doesn't she shut up so I can go do it? Go ahead - what you'll find in those chapters is imminently more important and more beautiful than anything here. But if you want a bit of background before you accept the challenge, here it is.

Today, there's something called the Red Letter Christian Movement that focuses, radically, on just the red parts, because in their way of thinking, what Jesus said is more important than what anyone else said. I have to agree. Not that you throw the rest out, but everything else should be taken in context, as commentary on Truth. Yes, yes -- I can hear pages rattling in the background while you look up the favorite rebuttal verse: Paul's reminder found in 2 Timothy 3:15-17:

16All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 17so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

Remember, though, if you have your ecumenical knickers in a twist, Paul was talking only about the Old Testament at the time he wrote those words. The New one hadn't come along yet. It wasn't even being finished writing, much less canonized (circa 305, there-abouts). Even so, Paul also wrote to the Colossian believers that:

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.16 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

Paul, in other words, gave Jesus's words every bit as much emphasis as the folks who printed them in red.

A Quick Overview

The Sermon on the Mount is called that for a very good reason: Jesus sat down on a mountain to teach the crowd that had followed him and his disciples that day. He started out by blessing them, specifically reminding them that God wanted to bless them. They were, for the most part, living under harsh Roman rule, with an occupying army to deal with on top of everything else. That first "blessing" part is why it's sometimes called the Beattitudes, meaning "blessedness." In Sunday school they like to say it's the BE Attitudes: Be humble, be good, be.... But it's cool just the way it is. Why do we have to try and cute-sy the Truth up?

Jesus spoke simply to them about practical matters of their faith (the crowd was mostly Jewish, as he was), but not just "obey the rules." Instead, he consistently went beyond, explaining that although they'd always heard one thing, he wanted them to understand the principle, not just give lip-service or white knuckle compliance.

It is the principles of Matthew 5-7 I want you to consider, at least once in your life if you've never read the passage. It is the principles of Matthew 5-7 I want to jolt you out of spiritual lethargy if you're thinking "Sure, sure, heard it a thousand times. Yada, yada, house built on solid rock. Got it."

You don't.

How can I say that? Because every time I read the Sermon on the Mount, I see something new, and I think you just might too. And because, looking around (and in the mirror) I don't see a Church (or a Christian) that is necessarily behaving and speaking as if Jesus's words had registered. Really and truly registered, sinking down into the deepest consciousness that is able to affect lasting change.

I Dare You

Don't take my word for it, though. Read it for yourself. I dare you. I double-dog-dare you to read Matthew 5-7 straight through, silently or out loud, and NOT hear its simple, yet powerful, eloquence. I'm not asking you to join the Red Letter Movement, or join a church, or believe in Jesus. I'm just asking you to read three chapters in a book. And if you don't have the book, you can read online:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/

I think you'll be pleased with the words. Comforted. Instructed. Maybe a few "ouches" here and there, but mostly, the refreshing sound of Truth. Oh, and by the way, the passage includes what is commonly known as the Beattitudes

As the Rev. Talmadge said, "It can't hurt. Might help."

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2016

Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible^® (NASB),
Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973,
1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation
Used by permission. www.Lockman.org

Out of a Job

2016-02-21T10:43:00.000-08:00

My granddaughter is 17, and her little brother just turned 13. They both live with me, so it's a different dynamic than many grandparents experience. When they were younger, their mother was often ill, and so a good deal of the parenting was mine. Now that she is able to parent them herself, it's sometimes a challenge for me to, well, not. Sure, I've got more experience. Sure, I actually know a better, easier way of getting something done or seeing a certain outcome, but I'm learning (slowly) to keep my mouth closed. Back off. Stay out of it. Keep a healthy distance.

I wonder if other women nearing 60 suddenly face the fact that after spending most of our lives with huge responsibilities -- the daily rearing, cleaning, wiping bottoms and noses, preparing meals, fixing problems and affixing band-aids to boo-boos, sewing clothes and hanging out the wash, giving advice and wiping away tears, teaching children how to make beds and tie shoes and (in my case, as a 12-year homeschooler) read and write and add -- we are now out of a job. That one, anyway.

My children are grown. We raised them, like the Boy Scouts, to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Some of the training took better than other parts; of the four, some are better in specific areas than their siblings. Each one, however, is of age. Each one is responsible for his or her own decisions, choices, and behavior.

No longer do I need to be vigilant on their behalf, or instruct them on what is Right. With one daughter and two grandchildren in the home, I still have a responsibility for the house itself, and make reasonable requests (in my opinion) as to their care of rooms or help with chores.

But I'm clearly out of a job. Or maybe the job description has merely changed, because it's not like I've retired. Theoretically I get to enjoy the fruits of my labors, enjoying the company and affection of my adult children, enjoying the company and affection of their children and significant others (and in one case, the children of a significant other). Now and then, my advice is asked. I get occasional texts and calls and emails and Facebook messages. Sometimes, my help is needed, and if able, I'm happy to provide it.

The adjustment hasn't been a smooth road, however. I've clung too long to being needed. My

expectations have been unreasonable. I've wanted my children to make decisions according to my own wisdom (which is unfair, because some wisdom must be attained over time). I've longed to see them walk in complete happiness, free from pain or issues or struggles, because as a mother of four young children, I tried to create that bubble of happiness. Somewhere along the way, the bubble burst. I've blamed this on myself (not true). I've blamed this on others (also not true). Bubbles are simply nice while they last, but they never last that long.

I've decided ... or maybe I should say that I am deciding, because it seems to be a daily process ... that working myself out of a job isn't a bad thing. It may mean that one phase of my life, my womanhood, is not exactly over -- I'll always be my children's mother, no matter how old they are -- but the lines have blurred. The edges of relationships have softened. My role in the play is being rewritten.

Mothers are called upon for so much: we have to be tender, we have to be strong, we have to sacrifice, we have to put the needs of our children first. As we reach this point in our lives, however, even though it sometimes feels harder, it's actually the opposite. We can relax. Take a deep breath. Do what we want. Go where we want. Not selfishly, but taking care of ourselves in ways we may have overlooked.

Many women learn this at a far younger age than I have. Women with different personalities may have less trouble letting go than I have had. Life has a way of knocking us around in different ways, and we learn the lessons we need at different rates. We get the same tests until we pass, and maybe we pass with an A+ and maybe we pass with a D- but that test is done, and it's on to another. This awareness of the job thing is, perhaps, just one more test for me.

I used to have a dream in my head: an Old World compound, filled with grown-ups and children, living and working together, relationships entwined with love and shared responsibilities. Bonanza and The Waltons and The Big Valley all merged into one big happy family. The problem with this is that it was my dream alone. No one else wanted it. My efforts to build it failed, and my disappointment in that failure was in danger of turning me into someone I didn't like.

My children were raised to be independent and capable, which meant that they didn't need or want a compound. They wanted wings. As they've flown away, they've learned to soar. And I have loved watching their majestic beauty, even from afar.

What do you do when you realize that one dream will never, ever, not-in-a-million-years, come true? Another dream replaces it, hopefully, because everyone needs a dream. King Solomon wrote that "a desire fulfilled is a tree of life" (Proverbs 13:12) but every tree begins with a seed.

During these last few years of adjusting to my new role in life, I've planted a seed. When there isn't enough rain, I have a watering can. If there's a chill in the air, I'm out there with newspaper to ward off frost. And I'm waiting, praying that this tree will grow quickly, knowing that the roots are deep. The soil is good.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2016

Chrissie Hynde Rocks. Literally.

2015-10-03T08:26:00.001-07:00

Since the late 70s, Chrissie Hynde she has been the one constant of the English-American group The Pretenders. She also rocks as a woman who knows who she is, where she's been, and handles criticism for speaking her mind.

The criticism comes, ironically, from proponents of women speaking their mind. Apparently we're supposed to say whatever we want unless it goes against the current notion du jour.

Hynde's 2015 memoir, entitled Reckless: My Life as a Pretender, Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Vogue, the New York Times, and other popular, well-respected outlets: "frank," "well-written," "humorous". But because of one small part, one tiny episode of transparency and personal honesty, that goes out the window with some folks, and she's come under fire.
has gotten rave reviews from the

Hynde's sin is that she is audacious enough to accept some of the responsibility for being raped.

That goes against the notion that No Means No (which it does!) and that rapists should receive consequences for their actions (they should!). There are lots and lots of generalities with such things, but occasionally, we need to realize that some circumstances are different.

M. Emmett Walsh, as Dr. Bass in "A Time to Kill."

Remember the scene in the movie "A Time to Kill" where a doctor's testimony is completely
discounted because he'd been arrested for statutory rape? What the jury didn't hear was that the girl was a few days shy of the required birthday to get married, and the couple stayed together forever. I may have the details wrong, but you understand the point. Sometimes, the facts don't add up to the underlying truth.

Hynde's rapes are unfortunate, tragic, emotionally harmful, criminal -- just like all sexual assaults. What makes her comments in her memoirs troubling to some is that she admits that she wasn't caught off guard, or stalked, or drugged against her will. Her eyes were wide open when she began hanging out with a motorcycle gang known for sexual misbehavior. She knew the lifestyle, she was aware of the risk involved, and when the inevitable (in her own thinking) took place, her response was philosophical.

"Technically speaking, however you want to look at it, this was all my doing and I take full responsibility. You can’t f--- about with people, especially people who wear ‘I Heart Rape’ and ‘On Your Knees’ badges," she wrote. In a later interview she stated, "You can’t paint yourself into a corner and then say, 'Whose brush is this?' You have to take responsibility. I mean, I was naive. If you play with fire, you get burnt. It’s not any secret, is it?"

Yes and no. And I get that.

When I was 16, I was molested by a family friend. In one respect, I should have seen it coming, and in another respect, I wasn't surprised when he made his first move. Because when I was 14, he'd made an inappropriate remark. I was offended. Red flags went up. I even rehearsed a confrontational conversation with him which I never (unfortunately) delivered.

Could've. Would've. Should've. We can't go back. We mustn't beat ourselves up for choices we made or opportunities we didn't take. But that doesn't mean we can't acknowledge the fact that we played a role in what eventually transpired. I should have repeated the remark to my parents, rather than plan on handling myself. There's no way of knowing if that would have changed the future, but it might have changed ours. I should have, when he said what he did, told him it wasn't funny, and I didn't like it. That one thing might have stopped him from what he did later.

Because I never confronted him or told a responsible adult what he had said, and later, what he did, I had a part in all that happened beyond simply being a victim. No, a survivor. I refuse to let him have any more control over my thoughts, behavior, emotions, whatever. But I also know, honestly, that I wasn't beat over the head and dragged into the woods, either.

I was manipulated, seduced, deceived. That was my own scenario. A smart, modest, raised-right teenager, and I still fell victim. Was it my "fault"? Not at all. I'm not blaming myself, simply owning the part I did play. I could have avoided what happened. I didn't act on the red flags. I didn't alert anyone of the subtle manipulations, because I was too immature to recognize them as such. But there was a time, when I knew something was "wrong with this picture," and I never followed through.

Today I see young women, teens, pre-teens, dressed provocatively, knowing that there are predators who would love nothing more than to rob them of those scanty clothes and what innocence is left. I worry about them. And I also know that some of them are actively asking for trouble, as Hynde admits she was.

Those who aren't...the girls and women who say they can dress however they please and it doesn't matter... I would suggest using a little personal restraint, a little common sense. Open those beautiful eyes a little more and really see where you're walking, and who you're walking with.

Rape isn't about lust, but control, they say -- but there are also plenty of lusty guys who think that what a girl wears on a date is the fashionable equivalent to putting out the welcome mat. Making out (which a girl may hope for and encourage) can easily become a rape... call it date rape if you must, but if a girl or woman doesn't consent to intercourse, it is rape. Report it, prosecute it. But also... avoid situations in which it is even possible.

My granddaughter and I went through a R.A. D. program at our local Sheriff's office. That's Rape Aggression Defense. The very first and most important training is self-awareness. Know who you're with, even in an elevator. Look at people. Look around. Check out your surroundings.

But back to Hynde: she went out of her way to find surroundings that were dangerous. She sought out people who were criminals. And so, she wasn't particularly surprised when they committed crimes and put her life in danger. She'd walked in with her eyes open.

I think it's grand that she can own her part in that. She would have completely avoided being raped (most likely) if she had avoided the rapists. Instead, she waltzed into a house on fire and got burned. She knows she was unwise to be there, and she's honest enough to acknowledge it.

That doesn't make her own rapists innocent nor blame other victims. But it does reflect the honesty of a woman who knows herself, and doesn't mind letting everyone else know her for who she is, not for who they want her to be.

Now, having said all that, let me also say this: it would have been appropriate, and better, and right, if Hynde had reported the rapes, if those guys with the horrible t-shirts and worse behavior had ended up behind bars. Acknowledging that she played a part by simply being around those types of people in no way implies that rape is acceptable. If you have been assaulted, molested, raped ... please talk to someone.

The national Rape Crisis hotline number is 800.656.HOPE (4673). Where I live, the Sexual Assault Assistance program provides victim advocates who will stay with you and your family through the entire process. The Inner Truth Project provides outlets for help and overcoming. Here are some links:

http://www.sexualassaultassistanceprogram.org/

http://www.innertruthproject.org/

https://rainn.org/

Being a victim of rape, incest, or molestation is never the fault of the victim, but if you can avoid being a victim, doesn't that make sense? R.A.D. teaches to run away from trouble, if possible. I think that's what Hynde is saying, that she could have avoided what happened, because she knew the risks, knew the environment.

We don't always have prior information. When we do, we should make the most of it. Run. Avoid. Be aware. Use wisdom. And if things happen anyway... get help. Make noise. A lot of noise. By yelling, and telling, by prosecuting if that's possible, you're helping not only yourself, but future possible victims.

Chrissie Hynde bashers should get over it, already.

(c) Ellen Gillette

A Letter to Indiana From God (a bit presumptuous of me, but He can handle it)

2015-03-29T11:32:00.001-07:00

Dear Indiana,

I am known by many names, and many of your citizens know me well, but allow me to introduce

myself to the state as a whole, because the state as a whole is currently in the news: I’m the Creator of the universes which spread out endlessly (I came up with infinity, as well) and have been around since Time began (that was mine, too).

Out of all that I created, Earth has been my pet project. What would happen if I created mankind with a free will, showed clearly the best way of going about life, and let them have at it? Of course, I already know the answer, because I’m outside of time, but it’s been a very interesting process for the last multi-millennia.

You may ask why I’m writing, when there are so many other pressing issues. Trust me, I have it well in hand, although you need to remember I see things from a very different perspective. When you see it all from beginning to end, it’s a little easier to see the reasons, but just as a forest fire may look – at a particular moment , to humans – as a disaster, the living forest knows that fire is a necessary cleanser periodically, allowing for better and more productive growth.

I am regularly accused of (1) not existing at all, (2) being cruel for allowing any number of things to continue, (3) being ineffective because I didn’t intervene in this or that tragedy, or (4) needing your help. Aside from the sheer entertainment value of (1) and (4), I put up with (2) and (3) out of mercy and patience, and the obvious knowledge that my creation’s limited understanding was, after all, built in. By moi.

But there are times, such as the current uproar over your Religious Freedom Restoration Act (Senate Bill 568), that I am inclined to give a little fatherly nudge. I could have sent tornadoes, an alien invasion, the zombie apocalypse, or plague – could, doesn’t mean I won’t…doesn’t mean I ever did! – but that isn’t how I roll. I wrote the book (literally and figuratively) on love. I AM love, if you remember one of my publicists’ words (I John 4:7).

Governments are raised up with my permission and for my purposes. As one of my other writers said, “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God” (Romans 13:1, NIV). Rulers always think they accomplished things by might or wallet or even qualification, and certainly I take all that into consideration, but I’m on an eternal clock. What happens today or next month or the next hundred years is not the pressing issue it always is with you, or them.

But Indiana. I’ve got some thoughts.

This bill troubles many of your citizens. It troubles many of the citizens of what you call the United States. For those with enough vision to see beyond the geographical lines and boundaries mankind has set up, it troubles citizens of the world, not so much for what it says, but what it implies. What it could lead to in the future.

Your governor, Mike Pence, wants to clarify the sticking point of discrimination protection, specifically discrimination against men who marry men and women who marry women, or would like to.

Not so long ago in your nation, Jim Crow laws kept the races separate, as if whites might catch black germs, as if blacks could not be trusted around white women, as if blacks were second-class, subhuman. Other countries went even further, gassing millions of Jews and other so-called “vermin.” If ever there was a point that I questioned myself, it would be when my creation, my children, are so blind that they lose sight of the fact that they are all, each one, exactly the same below the skin. Same bones and muscle, same veins filled with blood, same brains with electrical energy.

Masterpieces, each and every one. How often you forget this one basic fact.

Your bill, on the surface, seems innocuous enough, providing protection from lawsuits if a person, business, organization, church, etc. refuses to provide services to someone on the basis of the person (business, etc.)’s religious beliefs. Frankly, I would hope that folks would just as soon take their business elsewhere rather than get their knickers in a twist, so to speak. There are plenty of businesses that are not, for lack of a better word, jerks. Plenty of businesses who are in business to make a profit and not to make a political stand.

People need to be honest about such things. “This business is owned by a self-righteous hypocrite who still thinks whites are superior.” That might work. Or “We prefer to serve only those who attend our church/synagogue/mosque/coven/temple” – I wouldn’t think such a business would succeed, but it’s worth a try.

Because you see, even with the law in place, the religiously inclined for whom you claim the law is desired, are going to have a difficult time convincing the public and the courts that they are taking a stand based on religious beliefs if they are, at the same time, doing things that circumvent that very religion.

Religion is man-made, true – all I started out wanting for was that my creation love me, and one another. People have gone in various directions, and this is not the time for further explanations and apologetics. The fact remains that in the U.S. there are multitudes of religions operating freely, and your laws must apply equally, as your Constitution states.

Muslims will have difficulty proving that their unloving business practices are based on religion, since they know me as al‑Wadud, He who loves. Sikhs profess love of God and his creation (fellow humans included), therefore, good Sikhs would serve anyone. Buddhists strive for enlightenment, which comes through unselfishness – not likely to hold up in court if you are selfishly refusing to serve someone in a restaurant.

And Christians! Not so-called (their name is Legion) but true, sincere adherents to Jesus Christ, will be laughed out of court if they try to convince anyone that being unkind, unloving, intolerant, etc. is due to their religion. Really? Perhaps they mean a different Jesus than the one I know so well.

Religious freedom is lawful, and I make all kinds of allowances, constantly, for the behaviors and attitudes I observe in the United States, because your government places such a high priority on this one universal right. One’s right to religious freedom is not less important than one’s right to obtain services. We are in agreement here.

Common sense would dictate that if an organization states clearly that it is for men, or women, or heterosexuals, or gun-toting anarchists, or Baptists, or Catholics, or tree-worshippers, that anyone not in that particular category would stay away. Not wanted. Find somewhere to chillax after work. Common sense would dictate that if I want to buy something, and the owner would rather hold on to it than take my money, I can find it elsewhere. (I don’t literally mean myself, obviously…what do you have that I could possibly want…except your love!)

But people don’t always show a lot of common sense. That’s just reality. Every ornery agenda you can imagine is going to latch on to this bill of yours, challenge it, tie up the courts, eat up your budget. What you perhaps intended as a help for your 6.5 million citizens, a speculative protection just in case they ever need it, is overkill. Unnecessary. And it sends the wrong message.

Do you really want to go from the state known as The Crossroads of America, to simply Cross, as in Cross and Surly? Find ways to be more loving, more inclusive, more tolerant. Not less. As my guy said to the Romans years ago, "Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor" (Romans 12:10, ESV).

I can bless that. I will bless that.

Thanks for listening,

God

Taking up an Offense

2015-01-15T15:24:00.001-08:00

A Facebook friend posted an article about marriage, by a self-proclaimed "truth sayer" by the name
of Matt Walsh. Because of my respect for my friend, I took a look.

Walsh begins by announcing that Nicholas Sparks, author of multitudinous and much-loved romantic novels that all seem to end tragically (some of them anyway), is separating from his wife of 25 years. Note the word "separating." Walsh carries it to its logical, but not always accurate, conclusion by implying divorce. I know couples who have separated and remained married, getting counseling and enjoying a marriage that was stronger. It may not happen most of the time, but it happens. So that is strike one.

He then goes on to talk about how culture has negatively influenced us on the idea of marriage. There is the thought that there is that "one," a perfect soul-mate. He says that his wife wasn't "the one" until he married her. Okay so far. We have freedom of choice as to whom we marry. We aren't forced into it, as is the case in some cultures. We decide who to propose to, or who to say yes to. But then he starts to meddle.

There’s a very real danger inherent in the “there’s only one particular person out there for you” mentality. Think about it. If you are “meant” for one specific person, who’s to say when and if you’ve met them? Who’s to say that the person you married is them? And who’s to say that you don’t get married and then, just like that, someone moves in next door, or you get a new coworker at the office, or you run into someone at the grocery store, or you lock eyes with the cashier at Trader Joe’s and all of a sudden you realize that this is your real soul mate, the person you were “supposed” to marry? If we are meant for someone in particular, who’s to say you’re wrong? Sure, adultery is evil, but this is your soul mate we’re talking about here. This is the person God Himself designed for you. Can He really be mad if you ditch the mistake in favor of your true Prince or Princess Charming? Maybe you’re technically a backstabbing, adulterating cheater, but you’re just following your heart, and who can fault you? You’re correcting a mistake. Resolving a cosmic injustice. Fulfilling your destiny. Isn’t that what cheaters often tell themselves, especially women cheaters? This is the dark underbelly of pop culture fairy tales. It gives a free pass to adulterers, and convinces married people to follow their emotions rather than stay true to their vows.

What do I find offensive about this? The implication is that married people are always supposed to stay married, that marriage is always preferable to divorce, and that if a couple divorces, it's probably because of unfaithfulness. (In a way, it is, but more on that in a minute.)

I used to be so naive that I would have bought Walsh's logic without a second thought. Of COURSE! Marriage is sacred and divorce is wrongwrongwrong. Years ago, I even encouraged a woman to stay with her husband - because it's the Right Thing To Do - and later learned of his horrific emotional and verbal abuse. It pains me to think that she remained for even another day because of my well-meaning but ignorant advice.

I know a beautiful, lovely young mother who married a man in her church. After she and Mr. Right had a child together, she discovered a heinous crime and pressed charges. There were people who told HER not to get a divorce. Good-freaking-grief. The man is sitting in prison, where he belongs, and she's supposed to put the rest of her life on hold because of HIS mess? I think not. Where is the justice in that?

The problem is...well, there are a lot of problems, perhaps the most significant being that it's none of my gosh-darned business why a person who gets a divorce believes he or she needs to get a divorce.

Another is that while we may look at the Bible and traditional values, etc. and see an ideal presented, life is anything but. People change. We make decisions based on what we believe to be true and best at a particular moment, but I just can't wrap my head around the idea that staying in an abusive sham of a marriage is more glorifying to God than exercising that "free will" we talk about and getting out while the getting's good.

Another problem is that the ease of divorce today (from a legal standpoint) can easily lead to laziness and a lack of wisdom, to hard-heartedness. So I want to be clear that divorce would be sort of a last resort, after trying all available options. Chinese author Watchman Nee wrote that a divorce is the public declaration that the oneness God intends in marriage is dead. I like that - two become one. If they emotionally split back into two, a divorce is really nothing more than acknowledgement of that fact. It's an end. Probably not a happy ending, at least not at the moment. But not the end of the world.

A husband and wife (or in many states, a same-sex couple....that's going to get some folks riled at me, I'll bet) make vows before God which ideally will be obeyed. Except that life isn't ideal. People develop addictions, suffer economic setbacks, lose loved ones, have mental health issues, become criminals or abusive or assholes. What a blushing bride in her teens or twenties promises...what a lovesick groom of the same immaturity tells the world he'll do...changes. Always.

If both are able to keep up, emotionally, with the changes, great! Hallelujah! What a great example of love, romance, and commitment! Yay, those people! Pat them on the back and throw them a party!

Not everyone experiences that, however. Sometimes one person practically kills himself or herself trying to do all the heavy relationship lifting, while his/her partner becomes more and more distant. Sometimes two kids marry and when they grow up, realize they aren't the same people who said "I do." What's more, they don't want to be those people, ever again.

I said that divorces are the result of unfaithfulness, but I didn't necessarily mean sexual infidelity. Those promises in the traditional marriage ceremonies talk about honoring, cherishing. If a wife leaves her husband for another man, or leaves her husband and then finds another man...chances are, her husband was unfaithful to his vows long before that. The same thing is probable when a man leaves his wife. It's never because of one person falling in love, cheating, screwing around, or other phrases for what Walsh paints with a fairly wide brush as "evil." Two people say vows. And two people, working together, loving together, are necessary to maintain a healthy, happy, forever marriage. One person can't do it alone. Can. Not.

I suppose Walsh's blog struck a nerve because I have known many couples in loveless marriages who held on so long they turned into withered, bitter copies of who they once were. Ideally they would have sought help, gotten help, and experienced healing and transformation. That would require both parties wanting the same things...and if both wanted the same things, it's far less likely to end up in such a crisis in the first place. Ideally everyone with cancer receives prayer and treatment and experiences healing and transformation too, but we all know that the reality is that some people die. Only the most arrogant and cruel would blame them for not trying harder.

Some marriages end. I have, I say to my own shame, been arrogant and cruel, blaming one or the other or both partners in my heart for not doing enough, not trying this or that, not forgiving, not loving, not obeying. If I communicated that abysmal representation of Christian love to anyone reading this, I ask your forgiveness. I was stupid, self-righteous, and wrong. Oh, and young. Getting older definitely has a way of turning some of those black-and-white thoughts into more gracious grays.

Marriage problems are a concern, yes, especially when a failed marriage is that of a friend or family member. We don't like being reminded of the fact that none of us is perfect. As long as everyone smiles pretty and says things are fine, doesn't that make it so? When we discover that someone we thought was happily married really wasn't, we feel let down, disappointed. We may feel the need to change minds, offer counsel, send "fix it" books. And our hearts may be right, wanting only the Best for those we love.

That's our national codependency rearing its ugly head. Other peoples' lives aren't our responsibility. We can't possibly know what is Best for someone else, living under circumstances about which we know and understand very, very little.

I don't want to be too harsh on Mr. Walsh. He's young. He's excited about life. But he is also enjoying a happy, loving marriage that he and his wife have been maintaining for...not 25. Not 20. Twelve or thirteen! They've barely begun! Perhaps they haven't had any life-changing traumas occur - I hope not. I hope they never do. I hope that 40 years from now, Matt is still writing blogs about how great his life and marriage are.

But...if I had written about marriage after only 12 or 13 years, I wouldn't have written these words, either. (We're into our 39th year, and we still don't have it figured out completely, not by a long shot.) But I can tell you one thing: If Matt Walsh and his wife don't make it, I seriously doubt he'd appreciate folks writing blogs about it, building up the bloggers' audiences based on the Walsh's personal pain, smugly implying that divorce is an affront to anyone's own sensibilities and experiences. I think he would appreciate grace. Mercy. Understanding that since no one's living his life but himself, we don't know the whole story.

Amazingly (I prefer happy endings) Nicholas Sparks has kept millions of readers merrily buying books and devouring them. Anyone who sells that many books has my respect, whether I read them or not. So what if he and his wife aren't the perfect couple? They don't owe anyone an explanation for the choices they make in their personal lives, and they aren't This Month's Example of What Is Wrong With Our Country or Bad People.

Bottom line: I love the idea of marriages lasting and lasting and lasting if they can last with love and laughter, lots of kissing and touching, emotional and physical intimacy based on the sheer joy of being together. Without that, Lord keep me from judging when miserable people have had enough heartache and decide to part ways. Hopefully, as a friend of mine shared with me recently, they part as friends. And hopefully, each finds love again.

Maybe, really, for the first time. Hopefully for the last.

Ordinarily, I don't think it's a good idea to take up an offense for others. Two people may have a conflict and you get offended, then they make up and you're still mad. But Matt Walsh didn't just take on Nicholas Sparks and his wife - he used them to make a point, emphasis on used them. And he pointed his finger at lots of people I know and love, simply because in his world, divorce is the worst thing that could happen.

Earth to Matt: it isn't. Divorce isn't ideal, ever, but not much that passes for this life fits that description. Plenty of folks divorce on whim (and marry on whim, too, for that matter). But there are also valid reasons for divorce - which really aren't anyone's business! I just don't think honor or love or religion or Christianity or God are BEST served by going out of our way to make others more miserable than they already may be.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2015

A Bit of Perspective

2014-12-11T15:16:00.000-08:00

Watching "The Butler" this week, it dawned on me that given our brief history as a country, slavery was (relatively speaking) a few months ago. The Civil Rights movement was last week. Perhaps one reason why there has been such public outcry over recent tragedies is that what racial balance we HAVE achieved as a nation must seem tenuous to those who relatives still remember, firsthand, things like separate water fountains, lynchings, segregation.

We have come so far, but it is understandable that there would be fear, fear that that balance might tip at any moment. We haven't come so far, at least in some minds, that we could never go back. I don't think we will, but then again, I haven't been raised on horror stories.

White and raised in the South, my parents nevertheless taught us tolerance and equality. I never heard the N word in my home. I'm too young to remember much about the marches and the riots, the anger and the hatred. It was difficult to watch "The Butler" at times, to see a level of intolerance and cruelty I have never experienced. Snarling customers in a diner spitting in the faces of young college students conducting a peaceful sit-in. People made to feel as though they were less than others, less than humans.

Most of us have not experienced that, thank God. Certainly those of Jewish descent carry with them stories of the oppression in Europe. But perhaps black Americans have heard too many first-person stories of injustice handed down from those not-so-long-gone. Great-grandparents of our day can still remember hearing their own great-grandparents speak of firsthand experiences.

In our nation's history, injustice and racial inequality was the norm for a substantial length of time. When protests erupt, when cries of racial injustice are heard once more, it may be that the New Normal is not be quite as solid as we thought, as absolute as we had hoped. Having seen history retold in the movie, I understand a little better how it could easily seem to black Americans that we are not standing on a rock, but on shifting sand.

Those who lived through the Civil Rights struggles may be the best hope for speaking out today for moderation, cooperation, reason, kindness, forgiveness. Emotion cannot rule the day. There is too much at stake, for too many people. Those who raise their voices in anger, calling for violence...they only remember the struggles, and not the triumphs. Those who gave their lives for Civil Rights would not be pleased, I think, with much of the response to recent events.

But I think I understand a little more WHY there has been such an outcry, the protests, etc. Not just because of the incidents themselves - it is so hard to remain objective when lives are lost, when lives are ruined - but the culmination of our history, the upsurge of old feelings and fears once again.

Without a frame of reference, it is difficult to understand situations foreign to us. If you haven't buried a child, you can't possibly comprehend the depth of that particular kind of grief. Most of us have no real frame of reference for racial tension because we haven't personally experienced it. And we need to realize that for those who HAVE - the wounds are not fully healed.

We can, however, all appreciate the progress that has been made, the battles that have been fought and won so that human beings of one race can treat fellow human beings of other races with respect and good will.

Several years ago I was sitting with my mother at a restaurant in North Carolina. A black waiter came over to the table and was clearly enjoying his job. Friendly, glib, a twinkle in his eye, he charmed us both as he took our orders. When he left, my mother commented, "Times sure have changed." I knew what she meant. In her lifetime, she had known of blacks being separated from whites at theaters and restaurants, black men beaten for looking at white women, black schools inferior to white schools. Our waiter had benefited from the struggles, had complete freedom to chat two white women up without fear of giving offense or receiving punishment.

We have a bi-racial president, for heaven's sake! We have come so very far, in a relatively short span of history. From slavery to equality - but because it has been during a relatively short span, I can see why fear lingers. If the wrong people get into office, we could go back to the way it was.

We may not agree with the protesters, but we don't need to get sucked into mindsets that go completely off-topic; we shouldn't equate the loud, fist-raised ranters with the majority of peaceable citizens who just want to find a way to get through life, make a decent wage, see their kids graduate.

If you haven't seen "The Help" and "The Butler" I'd encourage you to do so. Many of the events they portray occurred in our lifetimes. Faint memories, perhaps. Incredible progress since, absolutely. But perhaps viewing our history, brushing up on painful attitudes and hurtful actions, may help you understand why there seems to be a fear that this or that are not isolated incidences but part of a growing trend. I don't happen to agree with that, but I think I understand a little better how much fear and anger remains.

We're a young nation. Very young. At times, a little too big for our britches. And issues are far more complicated than I fully appreciate, with roots going far deeper than I have much grasp of. But we must find a way to continue the forward motion and progress we have made. We must not become discouraged or let fear and bitterness widen the divisions between us.

I've babbled on a bit about something that seems a little clearer to me this week. In no way do I encourage violence as a means to an end. In no way do I encourage anything that discredits the thousands of Law Enforcement officers in our nation who daily lay their lives on the line for their communities. But I get it, at least a little bit more than I did before watching "The Butler." The scab is just about healed, and then it gets scraped off again. It's human nature to fall into a "here we go again" mentality, to doubt that change is real, or permanent.

Our timeline is so short. Two months ago, blacks were sold into slavery. Two minutes ago, there were random lynchings. Two seconds ago, an unarmed man was shot by the police. Completely unrelated to those with no frame of reference, but fear is strong. Fear runs deep. If we can all understand that, perhaps we can help find some real and lasting answers in the upward trend toward justice.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2014

Beauty

2014-11-10T13:20:00.000-08:00

Edward Bok’s story is the stuff of fairy tales. He emigrated from the Netherlands, grew up with nothing, and turned that nothing – through hard work – into a publishing empire as founder and editor of Ladies' Home Journal. He championed causes, refused to use quacks as magazine advertisers, and coined the term “living room” because it appalled him that people spent so much money furnishing the “parlor” without often venturing into it for the family’s enjoyment. His Bok Tower and Gardens, dedicated in Lake Wales in 1929, continues to inspire, educate, and quiet thousands of visitors each year.

Well-known to those who walk the peaceful garden is a famous quote, actually the words of Bok’s grandmother which he shared in his autobiography, The Americanization of Edward Bok; he won a Pulitzer for the book. The statement – on everything from plaques to magnets – is worded a little oddly, reminiscent of Old World syntax: Make you the world a bit more beautiful and better because you have been in it.

Think about that a minute. The big picture first, that when you die you will leave behind a legacy with your family, friends, and community. Will it be a legacy of beauty? Loving actions and words, accomplishments you were proud to achieve? No one wants to think about their death, as certain as they may be, however. I think we can take Bok’s quote and use it every day. Every hour. Every moment.

Years ago I was in Turkey, visiting museums and mosques. I was amazed at the use of artistry in unexpected places. Islamic art is traditionally free of any figures that might seem idolatrous. Living beings are often avoided, then, with a focus on geometric shapes. But such beautiful designs and colors are used, and in every corner, whether seen by many or tucked away, hidden. It reminds me of Thomas Gray’s Elegy in a Churchyard: “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen/ And waste its sweetness on the desert air.” In nature itself, where high atop mountains grow beautiful, delicate flowers that are rarely, if ever appreciated by the human eye.

I’ve heard that a good housekeeping practice is to develop an eye for making quick adjustments. Before leaving a room, scan for items out of place or in need of a once-over. Leave each room better than the way you found it upon entering. If this is done as a lifestyle, it follows that clutter is better kept under control.

We could adopt a combination of these thoughts as a lifestyle with one another, in our families, our relationships, our communities, our world. Beauty for beauty’s sake – not just artwork, but attitudes - in a world of coarseness, where giving someone the finger when he cuts you off in traffic is the standard, where children’s ears are no longer protected from harsh vulgarities, where those in authority are disrespected, where elegance has given way to crassness.

As a substitute teacher, I have been asked on several occasions why I smile so much. “I’m happy,” I reply. “Aren’t you used to seeing people smile?” Inevitably, the response is negative. How sad, that children grow up where a simple smile strikes them as unusual. We can change that.

We’re entering that time-slammed period of time in our country between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, when everyone seems to be in a hurry, pressured, focused on self-imposed goals or societally-imposed expectations. Buy, eat, hustle here and there. I propose that we take a few breaths and set another intention.

Let’s leave the next few months more beautiful. Flowers on the table. Smiles upon our faces. With every room we enter, let’s ask what can be done to improve it. With every relationship, let’s ask the same thing, every encounter with a fellow human being. In an elevator, what can I do to make a positive impact on these strangers – a smile, moving a little to the left to give someone more room, a compliment on those earrings? Does someone at the office never have a kind word for anyone – perhaps he or she could hear one, instead. Is a child at school always a problem? Perhaps he is waiting to see if his teacher looks beyond behavior to his true self, and appreciate him for just being who he is.

And when someone cuts you off in traffic, be thankful for your brakes, the gentle reminder to slow down, the opportunity to smile at another’s foolishness. It is a simplistic idea, perhaps, but a thing of beauty, too, that today, I might leave a conversation with a sense of having contributed something positive. I might leave a room with a sense of order and creativity. I might leave a person with a sense of affirmation and affection.

Maybe this is just too, too naive, but like in the movie Pay it Forward, in which a little boy challenged others to help, truly help, a few others, who would in turn help, truly help a few others...as in the book and movie Magnificent Obsession, where people devoted their lives to anonymously and significantly helping others...as in the Bible, where we are taught that we should love others as we love ourselves...I think a revolution of beauty in all its expressions is possible. Physical beauty is enhanced through smiling. Artistic beauty for its own sake, with no other purpose. A beauty of spirit, looking for ways to uplift. A beauty of order and cleanliness in our homes.

It's something to think about, anyway. For what it's worth.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2014

The Parable of the Wolf

2014-08-04T06:39:00.002-07:00

When we lived in Lillington, North Carolina, we attended Crossroads, a non-traditional Baptist church pastored by Ken Dalton. Every summer he did something unique with his sermons: During the series, he would focus on a current or past movie, and point out biblical viewpoints and lessons to be learned. Not every movie he chose was G-rated. Few of the movies he chose were "Christian."

I thought about this regarding two movies my daughter and I watched the other day. We'd had a full day and wanted to relax, so the plan was movie-dinner-movie. The first selection was The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the tough, greedy, licentious Jordan Belfort. I am sorry to say it was based on a true story, but we'll get to that later.

The second movie was also based on a true story: Noah, with Russell Crowe in the title role as the ark-building, humanity-saving, animal-herding patriarch we've known since we were kids at Sunday school. For non-Sunday schoolers, many different cultures include a story of a great flood. And there's this big ark thing in Turkey that didn't get there on its own. But that's another blog.

Of the two movies, which had more to offer, from a strictly biblical standpoint? Hands down, it was the first. That's right. The graphic portrayal of the ruthless and decadent Belfort - although not one I would necessarily recommend, and certainly not for family viewing due to excessive language, nudity, sex, drugs...pretty much the whole thing.

Paul's first letter to the young man Timothy contains this warning in chapter 6:

…9But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. 10For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

The Wolf of Wall Street shows us the reality of this in living color. It's as perfect and complete a picture of the downward spiral of greed as I can imagine. Jordan Belfort grew up poor and purposed never to be poor again. As a stock broker, he was introduced to the fast-paced, take-no-prisoners environment of easy money, easy sex, easy drugs. He became a drug addict. He lost his wife. Then he lost his second wife, plea-bargained with the FBI, served 22 months, and started a motivational speaking business.

What the movie doesn't tell us: He's apparently sober now, living close to his children, and in the process of paying back millions he bilked from clients. The story of Jordan Belfort isn't over. He could revert to the life of drugs and debauchery, or he may have learned his lesson. That's not for us to know, or to judge.

What pulled him down the slippery slope from hard-working husband to a broker pimp who snorted cocaine off a hooker's derriere? Not money. Money is a necessity in society. We use it to purchase goods and services we can't provide for ourselves. Money isn't evil. Sometimes we hear rants and raves against this rich person or that, as if their money automatically makes them greedy.

The most generous man I know is also the wealthiest - he sees himself as a conduit of God's blessings, which he believes he has received because he has used money according to biblical principals. He has tithed (given 10% back - and probably much, much more), given to the poor, been generous with others. He treated his workers well, before he retired. He taught his children the value of money, rather than spoiling them with things for which they were not grateful.

It's easy to see the contrast. It isn't money that's the problem, it's the love of money. The drive to accumulate more and more. Did Jordan Belfort help people along the way? Absolutely. The movie gives only one example of his charitable side, but there were probably others. But the ambition and greed he steeped himself in did not have positive results, because it was always about money, power, what he wanted, when he wanted it. Others, including his family, were there to please and serve him, not the other way around.

Bear in mind that the R rating here is not one of those like Schindler's List's, for brief nudity and some language. The language is relentless, F-bombs galore. Sex is graphically depicted. Lots (and lots) of skinny naked chicks. A disturbing scene in which little people are thrown around. As a cautionary tale, however - which parables sometimes were when Jesus told them - The Wolf of Wall Street has much to offer. Here's what NOT to do. Here's what happens when you don't care for anyone but yourself. Here's a little story 'bout a man named Jordan who loved money so much he lost the ability to love anyone or anything else.

Hopefully, his life has turned around. Hollywood's not as interested now, apparently which is probably a good sign.

And Noah? If you're a Crowe fan, go for it. If you want a truly exciting story, stick to the Bible. The movie version adds nuances and out-and-out fabrications that do nothing to enhance the original. Entertaining, but not the story of Noah you're likely to remember from Sunday school.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2014

End Times

2014-07-04T12:59:00.001-07:00

Jamie Buckingham and his wonderful wife Jackie

I'm not absolutely sure about this, but I think it was the late Jamie Buckingham - author, minister, speaker, and (what a blessing!) personal acquaintance - who said that someone once asked him about the prophesied return of Jesus to the earth.

"Are these the Last Days?" the person asked.

"Well, they're MY last days, anyway," Jamie replied.

These are the only days we get, in other words. Does it really matter to you or to me when Jesus will return, if it will be next year, or in the next millennium?

Trick question.

On the one hand, we are to be ready, at all times. Prepared. Our lamps filled with oil, as Jesus said in
the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. As wedding attendants, they had to stay up all night waiting for the bridegroom to arrive. The five wise ladies took extra oil along, just in case. The five foolish ones ran out and tried to borrow some from the others. The wise told them to go buy some, as they might all run out otherwise.

A wise, albeit (from some modern perspectives) selfish statement. But that's a blog for another day, the mind-set that "real" love involves constant giving, giving, giving which leads to an entitled segment of society with unreal expectations of both their own responsibilities and those of others toward them. Again, for another time.

The parable's message was to be prepared. Jesus had begun his discourse to the crowds and disciples by speaking against the pride of the Pharisees. Then he left the crowds and taught his disciples privately about he end of the age. Jesus warned that there would be deceivers who claimed to come in his name. (check) There would be wars, famines, earthquakes. (check) Christians would be persecuted (check - and I don't mean being the subject of memes on Facebook. In other parts of the world, Christians are still martyred for their faith.) Christian love would grow cold. (An argument could be made that this would also be a check, although I see signs of abundant Christian love every day.) The Gospel would be preached in the whole world

Che- nope. Hasn't happened yet. In 2014 there are still unreached people groups that have never heard the Gospel. Dedicated missionaries are chipping away at the list, but to date, according to Global Research, there are over 3000 unreached people groups. 352 of those have populations in excess of 100,000. That's a lot of people.

Which is one reason why, when I hear of this or that famous evangelist say THE END IS NEAR, I remember Jamie's words. The end is near for me, nearer at 56 than it was at 55, but not THE end. Not the end of the world. Not the end of life as we know it. Not the beginning of the Great Tribulation. No sign of the Anti-Christ. No mark of the beast on the horizon.

The other big reason, an even bigger reason, I don't think Jesus is coming back any time soon is that he returns for a spotless Bride, the Church. Paul wrote, in his much-(and unfairly, I think) maligned discourse on marriage in Ephesians 5, the following:

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. (Italics are mine; the unattainable standard for husbands is Paul's)

Jesus is returning (he said he was, and I believe it) for a radiant Church. A spotless Church. A holy and blameless Church. Not little-c church as in the one you go to, or used to attend. The big-c Church, the worldwide group of all who believe that Jesus is exactly who he claims to be.

And if you've BEEN around any of us lately, you will probably agree that as THAT Church...to put it in very plain terms: We ain't done yet. I don't need to give any specifics, it's so epidemic. The Church is in process, but the process is nowhere near coming to an end. The Bride hasn't even chosen her dress. Jesus is pacing up in heaven somewhere, wanting to get. On. With. It. and the Bride is still thumbing through bridal magazines. Hasn't even picked out the cake. Bickering with the bridesmaids, broken out in acne. A mess.

A loved mess. A mess that is looking forward to the wedding, despite all the distractions. A mess that is accomplishing great good throughout the world. But a mess, nevertheless.

So. Is it the End Times? It's yours. It's mine. And we're supposed to be ready at all times, just in case. And also, because being ready means doing the things we're supposed to be doing: learning, praying, praising, giving, helping, affirming, strengthening, uniting, forgiving, loving, loving, loving.

Did I mention that we're supposed to be loving each other? Jesus mentioned that as well. More than a few times.

So yes, it matters. When Jesus returns matters a lot, because it reminds us to be ready. Even if the end isn't as near as some would say. Get ready. Stay ready. Be about the things we know to do (the short list, paraphrased):

He has shown you what is good: do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. - Micah 6:8

Do the Word. - James 1:22

Be thankful. For everything. - 1 Thessalonians 5:18

Follow Jesus. - Matthew 4:19

Look after orphans and widows, and don't become polluted by the world. - James 1:22

Don't be judgmental. - Matthew 7:1

God is love. If you live a life of love, you're either on the right path now, or you'll get there eventually. (1 John and a little of mine)

No need to sit around twiddling our thumbs, waiting for the Lord's return. Get busy! That love stuff is pretty much a full-time job.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2014

Sex Ed

2014-05-20T18:47:00.003-07:00

My last post was two months ago. I've been busy.

This afternoon, going through my grandson's backpack, I saw a couple of words in his distinctive scrawl that caught my attention immediately. My grandson is 11, in the 5th grade. I don't expect to see school papers, or personal papers for that matter, that include the words "penis" or "vagina." Certainly not both. I flipped through the other papers stapled together. Clearly this was part of a science lesson on AIDS, but I couldn't remember seeing anything about it. If I had, it was so long ago that I'd forgotten it.

I called the school and got the principal, fresh off dismissal duty and no doubt tired, but not too tired to talk to a concerned grandparent. He assured me that yes, permission slips had indeed gone home with every student. I assured him that either my daughter had signed one, or I had - and forgotten. "The papers are incomplete," I told him, "but we can go over them at home." Click.

Later, I took the papers into my grandson's room and pointed out that some of the vocabulary match-ups were wrong. I wanted him to have the correct answers. When you're talking about genitals and STDs, you don't want your grandchildren walking around with the wrong ideas.

Not like you did, yourself.

I remember the library where this happened, so I was either in the 5th or 6th grade (still an elementary grace back in the Mesozoic Era). I commented that something was very gay, and was chastised by a worldlier classmate. I am fairly positive that this was the first time in my life I got a hint that "gay" might have earthy, even naughty, overtones. I thought it was about being happy.

Did I go home and ask my parents about it? Of course not. I got my sexual education from a book my mother kept hidden at home. Since I eventually did most of the housework (she worked full-time), I would discover the book while putting away laundry or dusting the bookshelves in the family room, take a break, and glean pearls of wisdom. The book was Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask, by Dr. David Reuben, which came out when I was 12. (It was in paperback by the time I got a hold of it, however.)

Like the all-you-can-eat buffet patron who was sent away..."But I thought it was all-you-can-eat for $10!" ...and the owner says, "That IS all you can eat for $10!" ... the title was appropriate. What I wanted to know WAS everything. Dr. Reuben's book was quite the education, but it was all theory. Actual practice took things to an entirely different level, but that wouldn't come for quite awhile. (I was a late bloomer, as they say.)

So 5th grade THEN had not prepared me for facing 5th grade NOW. Do 5th graders need to know the information that was in the lesson? This particular packet was aimed at AIDS. I think that's important information. AIDS can kill. AIDS was one of the factors that led to increased sex education in the school system - awareness is key. And, as we should all know now, it isn't just a problem in the homosexual community. We're all in this together, obviously. A sick community does no one any good.

Sex ed increased in the schools. Did that cause an increase in Bad Behavior? Surprisingly to some, no.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, teens are waiting longer to become sexually. From 2006-2008, 11% of girls polled in the 15-19 age range had had sex, compared with 19% in 1995. And 14% of the guys in the same age bracket were virgins, down from 21% previously. They gave reasons based on religious beliefs, morality, a desire not to get pregnant, and not wanting an STD.

For those who haven't ever opened a magazine or taken my grandson's 5th grade Science class, an STD is a sexually transmitted disease. Kids having sex lack maturity to go with those hormones, and sometimes have sex without using "protection" (i.e. condoms). If you've ever picked up a brochure at the health department, however, you know that promiscuity snowballs:

That's mind-boggling, isn't it? A dozen different sexual partners, who each have a dozen different sexual partners, and things get out of control very, very quickly. Kids are supposed to have the be-jeezus scared out of them by such information, and "Just Say No."

It would seem that the plan is working, at least to some extent. Not enough - half of the STD cases reported each year, according to the Center for Disease Control, belong to patients between 15-24 years old - but information is not the bugaboo demon some people have painted it to be over the years.

Sex education isn't as modern a thing as one might assume. Even before the turn of the century (the 20th, not the 21st) pamphlets were circulated, speeches made, mostly about the evils of masturbation. The World Wars gave the country an increase in STDs, however, and sex ed started getting a better rap. It was a health issue, after all.

There were critics, of course. Some felt that the birds and the bees were most appropriately taught at home, by stable and loving monogamous parents by the name of Ward and June Cleaver. Reality wasn't as effective. Schools got in on the push for prevention of sexual abuse, STDs, teen pregnancies, and more.

There was also a concern that educating school kids about condoms and homosexuality would increase both in society. An argument could be made for this, I suppose, but the increase of Trojan sales and gay pride has more to do with society in general than sex ed at school.

All this to say that at one time, I might have withheld permission for my kids to have the lesson at school. I homeschooled for 12 years, remember. I think I could handle - and did - discussions about sex. I don't remember these discussions, however. I probably didn't say enough, or do enough. Maybe I subconciously knew that because I was doing more than leaving a book ill-concealed, that would make up for the lack of a power point presentation or anatomically correct dolls.

But now it's grandkids. I want my grandsons, especially, to learn how to treat young ladies, how to choose young ladies who act like young ladies, how to be respectful. I want them to grow up knowing that sex is this awesome, unbelievably wonderful gift from God that has important boundaries set NOT to rob them of fun, but to safeguard their physical, emotional, even spiritual health and happiness. I want them to fall in love and have no baggage when they give themselves completely to the object of that love.

I want my granddaughter to realize she must respect herself, or young men will not. I want her to know that not just YOUNG men look at her (she is very pretty, and very curvy, at just 15) and that there are some very, very bad guys. I want her to learn there are guys who know the value of manners and a good work ethic, who are sensitive and have a great sense of humor. I want her to know that when a man says, "If you love me, you will..." he doesn't have a clue what love is.

It has been said that men say "I love you" in order to get laid, while women put out in order to hear those words. I don't know. I think we're all just hungry for connection, for love, for intimacy. Kids today may have a better working vocabulary of the terms and parts, but I'm not at all sure they're learning the more important things. Put a group of teens in the room and chances are, they're not talking, but texting and checking out Facebook. Which is fine. But it's so not intimacy.

I wasn't upset by the materials I saw from the school. I took the unfinished paper into my grandson's room and corrected some of the errors with him. He didn't seem particularly interested. He's 11. I'm okay with that. It sounds trite to say that I want to protect him from predators and from getting his heart broken, that I just want him to fall in love and be happy, but I don't mind sounding trite. Sex is too important to be reduced to coarse jokes and R-rated movies. It's too important to learn from the wrong people, those who have selfish interests and agendas. Who use other people and throw them away.

I heard once that God never intended anyone to come into your life, mess it up, and then walk away. It was during a talk about sexual purity, and it stuck with me despite the fact that I haven't always been sexually pure in thought or deed. There is a high standard, and it comes direct from the Creator. Who loves whom - that's not the issue here. What I'm getting at, is that the reason there are such high standards is because it's that important. God is love, the Bible says, and while that doesn't mean the opposite - love is not God - it does say to me that love is God's domain, a priority. He uses the marriage relationship to explain his love for his people. It matters. It should be, and I believe it can be, the best thing on earth when two people in love enjoy one another completely. But that doesn't happen because you've had a course at school.

Sex is one thing; intimacy is what we thirst for when it isn't there. And they don't teach that at school, pretty sure.

(c) 2014 Ellen Gillette

Coming to Terms with Obamacare

2014-03-12T11:19:00.001-07:00

I don't like being told what to do. I suppose it's human nature, or perhaps a Western thing. Wherever it came from, it gets reined in appropriately when it comes to God (mostly), traffic laws (mostly), and the Protestant Work Ethic (which, from my observation is not so much Protestant as it is Decent Folk - I mean, the Catholics I know work every bit as hard).

As I have gotten older, I have realized this basic fact: people do what they want to do. They may argue with this if you butt in and say it to their faces, but if they're honest and thoughtful enough, they will eventually have to agree. The first time I had such a thought was many years ago, as a young wife. I was putting away groceries and was angry at my husband. (The reason isn't important, and not just because I don't remember; chances are very good that he had done nothing wrong, just annoying.) Perhaps as a Freudian move, I threw a package of hot dogs across the room in exasperation. Why am I here?! I thought.

And just as quickly, I realized The Truth: I'm here because I want to be here.

Keep that in mind, the next time someone complains about a situation or person. Why stay, then? Because the reasons for staying outweigh the trouble, guilt, cost, etc. of changing jobs, roommates, spouses, residences, etc.

Americans - and I am painting with a very wide brush, I realize - choose the things which control us. We vote for the people who make our laws. We set our alarm clocks to go off at ungodly hours of our own free wills, because we want to keep our jobs or get to the mall for an early bird sale. We follow traffic laws because we don't want to get tickets. We study because we want to get good grades, pass the class, graduate the program. We put ourselves through extreme discomfort in order to finish a race or lose weight or get in shape.

But the title says "Coming to Terms with Obamacare" and so far, I haven't mentioned insurance. I don't like having to get insurance just because the government says I have to. So, as I sat down to log onto the healthcare marketplace, what were my options? I could not get it, and pay a penalty. Or I could get it. I decided to get it.

So what were my options? I couldn't get it through my husband's work because he said it was too expensive. I looked at the marketplace options, which cost even MORE. Then I remembered that friends had belonged to a Christian organization that operated LIKE insurance - monthly fees, coverage, but had a different philosophy. Would that work?

I looked into it. The idea is like this: you pay a monthly fee that goes directly to someone else's medical bill, so you're helping someone. And not just any person: someone who is a Christian, so...the theory goes...someone who has a healthy, moral lifestyle. When I looked at the application, however, I balked. I was supposed to promise, close my eyes and hope to die, that I live according to the New Testament.

Talk about a broad brush.

Throw seven Christians together (please - not literally) and you'll get seven interpretations of what a "New Testament" lifestyle looks like. For some, it means no drinking. For others, drinking in moderation. For others, getting plastered as long as you're doing it at home where no one will see you. And let's not even talk about sex...there are probably a few people who think anything but the missionary position is a sin, even if you're married, monogamous, and straight.

I didn't like the idea of the government telling me to get insurance, and now I didn't like the idea of an insurance company (yes, it qualified for Obamacare) telling me what constituted a New Testament lifestyle. Because frankly, I don't even live MY idea of what that means. Not every minute of the day and night. And that's what I would be saying, if I clicked the appropriate box. (There wasn't a "some of
the time" option anywhere I saw. I looked, much the same way I've always looked for loopholes in what my parents told me to do, school rules, employee requirements, etc.)

So I was back to more traditional insurance coverage (as in "more expensive") and my nephew Jason helped me out. He found a plan that is astronomical to someone who doesn't spend much on health care annually (currently, me), but makes me legal. Since I only work part-time, I am now, pretty much, working to pay for my insurance, which galls the shit out of me (not a New Testament-approved word, there, which renders me non-New Testament-compliant at the moment and thus, from an honesty standpoint, ineligible for the Christian pseudo-insurance that costs less).

But as I have pondered, and read liberal Facebook posts, it strikes me that Obamacare and the Christian organization are doing basically the same thing: paying the bills of other people who need help. It's just that with the latter, you're paying for the needs of "nice" people, "good" people, "Christian" people. And with Obamacare, you're just helping the poor.

Sort of like what Jesus did. Ouch.

Venting a Bit about a Bible Study

2014-03-03T09:21:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago I went to a Bible study. There was a kids' group at the same church was going on which ended before the Bible study, so I had to leave early. And it's probably a good thing I did, because I might have been compelled to interrupt, or pose a question that would have stepped on - from what I could tell - the toes of just about everyone who had been vocal.

The minister decided to tackle homosexuality. Looking at the materials that were handed out for reference I wasn't sure which direction he was headed. I wanted to keep an open mind, hoping that I would hear a refreshingly compassionate message.

Not so much.

I became increasingly uncomfortable, thinking of friends who are gay or have family members who are gay, who would be so hurt by what was being said. The thought that I couldn't, in good conscience, invite them to attend that particular church with me made me feel sad.

Understand, the verses being quoted were accurate. It was just that only certain verses were quoted. Which is, of course, the way any message goes. You can't quote the entire Bible or you'd be there all day and night. And I think that only when the entirety of scripture is considered, do some things start to make sense. It's just quicker, and easier, and more painless (for those speaking, usually) to use an abbreviated approach.

Later, I emailed the minister and let him know my thoughts. He responded quickly, and said that by the end of the Bible study (remember, I had left a little early), they had gotten around to the "all sin is sin" which was supposed to take the edge off the judgement and condemnation that had come up previously. And it's true. All sin IS sin. But I would bet money, if I were a betting woman, that the majority of the folks sitting in that church that night had one list of their own fairly mild and even reasonable sins, and the far worst sins that everyone else commits.

The Greek word we translate as sin is a word picture. "Hamartia" is actually one of several words translated "sin" but it is the main one. It means missing the mark. The bull's eye of a target represents the holiness and perfection of God. We constantly miss the mark - no matter how close we come, we are never spot on. We might be way out on the edge of the target. We may be a centimeter from the black bull's eye. Or if you're like me, the arrow is off in the woods somewhere and it takes the better part of the day to even find it.

The point is, we are all sinners. Humans are born into sin. My husband used to get a rise out of my mom when he would look at his newborn son and say, "Repent!" He was joking, but not theologically. We are born in the likeness of our father Adam, with a sinful nature. When we are born AGAIN, accepting the forgiveness and sanctification of Jesus Christ, we become saints. We have all the power of the Holy Spirit within us to avoid sin, something we didn't possess prior to that. Before sanctification and spiritual regeneration, we can try really, really hard to do better and often are able to accomplish wonders through sheer will power, but we still have, at our core, a sinful heart. After....the power is there to say no to sin. And yet we do not. We may continue to entertain "little" sins, or may struggle with "big" sins, but continue and struggle we do.

The problem with a lot of Christians, as I observe and read, is that we are fine with this state of affairs so long as we focus, at church, in the news, on Facebook, on all the sins with which we don't have a particular struggle.

If I'm skinny (I am not) then I point my bony finger at the sin of obesity. If I'm a teetotaller (I am not) then all alcohol consumption is reprehensible. If I'm straight (which I am) then lsurely I must attack those who are not.

This may come as a surprise to some of you, but a Christian can lie, be unfaithful to his or her spouse, cuss someone out, steal things from his place of employment, discipline a child in anger, ignore someone in need, be a glutton, be proud of not being a glutton, worry - all sins. There were probably some on the list that struck closer to home for you than others.

But back to that Bible study.

I love sex. I'm so thankful God created the sexual relationship for men and women. I happen to be attracted to men, and both enjoy and appreciate the wisdom and wonders of monogamy, so that worked out very nicely for me. But I know others who knew, from a very early age, that they were attracted to the same sex. I know men (and women) who have monogamous, committed, long-term relationships that make many of the heterosexual, Church-sanctioned unions I've observed look bland and loveless....which they are. Which honor God more? Committed, loving same-sex unions that are villified by many in the church, or white-knuckled, angry, abusive marriages between men and women but do nothing to honor the perfect picture of Christ and the Church...which biblically, marriage is to be.

Granted, I used to be very black and white, very cut and dried, very...self-righteous. I knew the Truth. But when Saint John has the gumption to say that if everything Jesus did or said was written down, the whole world couldn't contain the books...John 21:25...then it makes sense to me that Jesus may have had some things to say about things we don't understand completely.

I don't understand the whole gay thing. At first glance, it's pretty clear that male parts fit nicely into female parts. Male parts don't fit as well into male parts. Female parts are missing some key ingredients. Adjustments are made that apparently make it all work, and that's, frankly, neither something I'm interested in nor something that is any of my business. And too, if it's just a matter of parts, what is all the hoopla about anyway?

Because it's not about parts at all. It's about PEOPLE. People who have feelings, and emotions, and dreams, and valid expectations for how they are treated by people who claim to follow Jesus Christ.

I recently had a gay man tell me they don't understand the whole gay thing either - they just knew, and chose to be true to who they were.

I think that many Christians, especially heterosexual Christians, haven't taken the time to get to know any homosexual folks, and so they are lacking an important frame of reference. You can't argue with experience. You can believe speaking in tongues is of the devil, for example, but if you get to know someone who actually DOES speak in tongues, and you discover that you trust their character completely, then maybe...you've got something askew in your thinking. Same here. If you meet gay couples, see their genuine devotion to each other, see their kindness - it's not so easy to hold a sign somewhere with barbaric words like "God Hates Gays."

He doesn't. If he does...if he hates those who miss the mark, who are guilty of breaking his holy Law...if God is not really love, as it says in 1 John 4, then we are ALL in trouble. What the gays are up to in the media and politics should be the least of our worries.

I think what bothered me the most about the Bible study I attended was the use of Sodom and Gomorrah, but only Genesis 19. Hello? Sodom comes up again in Ezekiel:

"'Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy." (Ezekiel 16:49)

I heard muttered comments in addition to what was being presented in the materials. I heard some extremely arrogant overtones. I saw plenty of folks who were overfed. The church does help the poor and needy, but they were behaving that night, anyway, as being unconcerned over the 8,000,000 gay people in the United States.

Truth is truth is truth. But where we go astray, in my opinion, is believing that the slim leather volume with Holy Bible imprinted on it is the whole of God's wisdom.

Years ago, a man spoke about a dream or a vision he'd had in which he was taken to heaven, taken to a huge tall room that was filled, top to bottom, with books. All the wisdom of the universe was contained there. The angel, or whoever his guide was, went over to a shelf and pulled out a small book. It was the Bible. Precious, yes. Truth, yes. But how arrogant and ridiculous for us to suppose that ALL of God's wonders and wisdom could possibly be condensed into its pages??

Frankly, I have enough trouble just trying to live according to the Bible we do have- I'm pretty glad we don't have a whole Encyclopedia to follow. But I think we need to exercise a bit of humility too.

It reminds me of the Jodie Foster movie, Contact. Her character says this to a group of children:

I'll tell you one thing about the universe, though. The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space. Right?

I can't possibly understand the universe...universeS, plural. It is impossible for me to know if life exists
in other forms elsewhere, or in the same form elsewhere. I know less than less about ANYTHING. I believe the Bible is true. I believe that love is true. I believe that Jesus died to open the way back to God for a sinner named Ellen Gillette, and every other person on the planet. I believe that what I don't know is a lot, but that I am called to love and kindness, to love my brothers and sisters - which NEVER, in the Bible, has something tacked on like "unlike they're gay...or another race....or poor...or stupid...or ugly...or unloveable...or of another political persuasion...or believe differently.

Since we know so little, isn't it possible that the Church should err on the side of love and compassion and let God sort out the particulars in his own way and time, rather than attack the particulars and leave people bleeding and dying by the roadside of our self-righteousness?

Apologetics

2013-12-10T16:10:00.001-08:00

I really never thought it would come to this. Not in my lifetime, anyway. But increasingly, letters to the editor, columns, Facebook posts, Internet articles and blogs, television commentary, etc. etc. ad nauseum seem entirely content with “defining” Christianity by what this or that person said or did. And

whether that person is an elected official, Hollywood celebrity, or the Pope, everyone who says he or she is of the Christian faith gets lumped in, expected to take the lumps – because let’s face it: the commentary on Christianity is growing more negative every year.

Which Jesus prophesied it would, by the way.

Jesus who? When I was growing up in the Bible Belt of North Carolina’s Appalachian mountains, just about everyone I knew went to church. We knew who Jesus was from Sunday school and insipid paintings. We would hear stories about missionaries going to islands of cannibals or into the thickest parts of the rain forest or climbing the highest Asian mountains to reach people who had never heard the Gospel, had never heard the name of Jesus and it was magical. Can you imagine? They’ve never heard?

Now it is 2013 and there are people in the United States, long considered the gold standard for Christianization, who have only heard the name of Jesus as a curse word. Have only heard the term “Christian” used derisively, primarily in the media.

Prolific novelist, professor, and apologist C.S. Lewis, perhaps best known for the Narnia children’s’ series that have found their way onto the silver screen in recent years, was also a radio personality in the 1940s. His radio material was geared to an agnostic, skeptical audience, eventually appearing on bookshelves as the classic Mere Christianity, which I heartily recommend. I’m not an apologist, certainly not a scholar of any merit. What I am is a learner, and along the way, I have learned this: I believe that God exists, that he created this universe and perhaps a million million more universes for his own purposes, almost all of which about which I have no understanding.

On planet Earth, the gem of our sun’s solar system, I have come to believe that one rule was given; one rule was broken. Unity between Creator and created was broken. From there, various seekers of truth were educated, called, anointed to lead other seekers of truth in becoming reunited with their Creator. A complex and impossibly difficult-to-follow Law was communicated for two reasons: one, to give people a way to God, things to do and sacrifice so that they felt they had a chance with him; and two, groundwork for something far more efficacious in the future.

At the right time, God found the circumstances and climate in which to appear as a man, as vulnerable

and powerless as he could be, in the form of a human baby. We call this Christmas now, but then, it was just a young couple marveling that shepherds were bowing in their infant son’s presence. Later, astronomers or kings or whoever they were from the East warned them their son was in danger. Still later, he grew up as a carpenter. For only three years, after beginning his life’s purpose, announcing that the kingdom of God was at hand, he spoke to people throughout the land of God’s love and forgiveness. He did not call people to change or obey, but to follow. Some did, and from the original handful, the whole of Christianity today has been born.

Jesus claimed to be God in the flesh. Therefore, he was eithe

r telling the truth or he was the biggest scam artist known to man. There is no room for a “good man” or a “good teacher” or even “a prophet of God.” His words are clear: follow me and love me as God incarnate, or forget me altogether. He did nothing to try and add to his numbers, unlike modern western churches that continually add new programs or build enormous buildings hoping to increase their numbers. If anything, Jesus made it difficult to be his follower. At times it seems he went out of his way to confuse his listeners.

You have to really, really want to follow to do so. And even then, you have to accept the fact that those who have taken the name of Christian have, historically, done and said things so contrary to Jesus’ own teachings that it boggles the mind.

I am a Christian. Raised in the church, I realized as a teenager that I was completely convinced that God exists, and that Jesus was God in the flesh, sent to die on the cross of Calvary (that was that groundwork I alluded to earlier, with the Law) as the final sacrifice for the sins of all mankind, once and for all. We’ve been forgiven. The way has been made clear. It only remains for us to each decide whether we believe it or not.

I’m not a good Christian, mind you. I do not reflect an accurate picture of Jesus’ perfection, or God’s transforming power and love. I’m not even particularly nice much of the time. I sin regularly and at an appalling rate. But I also believe that the shed blood of Jesus is more than enough to cover those sins, which leads me, every time I fall, to thank God for his grace, mercy, and forgiveness, and to pray for wisdom and strength to continue to grow as his child.

So the next time you hear about some whacko Christian saying God hates gays or liberals or Muslims or pushing some political agenda…I hope you’ll remember this one lone voice piping up at Christmas time saying, um, no. That’s not true. That’s not true at all.

God loves his creation so much that he came to live among it, clothed with fallen, frail flesh but living without sin so that he could give his life as a pure sacrifice for all – at once satisfying God’s justice and mercy, all in one fell swoop.

You don’t have to believe in God. He believes in you. And he will do everything he can to convince you that he exists. And beyond that, that he loves you. The life we live on Earth, whether a hundred seconds or a hundred years, is the snap of the fingers compared to eternity - an eternity created for those wish to spend it with their Creator. Those who don't wish it, are not forced to be there. He leaves the choice to us.

Are there troubling issues? Absolutely. Things I don't like about God's ways? Sure. Things I despise about Church and Christians? Yeppers. I even wrote a book about it: Baaad Sheep - When God's People Let You Down (www.smashwords.com). But I am stuck - if God exists, why should I expect him to comply with my wishes, or my idea of him? He is GOD. It makes perfect sense to me that I wouldn't understand everything, or even like everything, he does.

And because I recognize my own imperfections, even as I know that I sincerely believe in him and in Jesus Christ EVEN WHILE committing sin, I recognize that it is completely understandable that other sinful saints will say and do the most ridiculous, horrible things. Embarrassing, but hardly surprising. We are all seeking truth. We haven't arrived. The worst of us think they have, think they have the corner on Truth, think they can fit Jesus into a nice little package or paranoia and ignorance, but he just won't be hemmed in. Imagine the audacity, the pride of that thought: Box the Creator of universes in? I think not.

My Idea, Released

2013-11-29T17:01:00.001-08:00

Are you comfortable? This may take awhile. Of course, I used to write a new post for this every two
weeks, but that was a long time ago. I've been lucky to get out one a month, and I don't believe in luck. So there you go.

I have lost a lot of charms during my lifetime, the kind that hang on necklaces. I had a pretty silver circle with my initials on it. A gold one received in high school that may be around here somewhere - I gave it to my mother years ago, and then she gave it back, so it should be in a drawer but Lord only knows. Several from my sister, not because of any Freudian thing but because she has given me more gifts and therefore the odds were better that I would lose a certain percentage. I don't have a great track record with such things.

I could make excuses that we've moved around a lot and that my things have been rifled through in my absence, but the fact remains that I haven't taken good enough care of some things (and people) for which I honestly care deeply.

This week, there was a lot of turmoil and drama and I went outside to (1) get away from it and (2) pray about it in a quiet place. While I was sitting on a marble bench in the front yard, I had a revelation. My IDEA of what a happy family should be had crossed a line, maybe from the very beginning, but certainly at some point. There is a tired - but true- saying in Christianese that says "Jesus is either Lord of all or he isn't Lord AT all." In other words, whatever is number one in your life is God (or god, as the case may be).

I made having a happy family that looked and acted as I thought it should, for years I think, a god. Maybe not The God I Worshipped, but right up there. And that's wrong. We can have good ideas, great ideas, even GODLY ideas, but if we start holding them up above all else, if we let the ideas control us, turn us into people who try to rein everyone into the roles our Idea has cast them in, then we need a good talking to out on a bench at night in the rain.

Did I mention that it started raining while I was sitting outside?

Anyway, I cried over this incredible failure on my part to trust God (who has, repeatedly and consistently, proven himself completely trustworthy) with this vital part of my life. I was so busy wailing and gnashing my teeth over the failure of our family to be My Idea of A Happy Family that I'm sure I added to the unhappiness, to the problems, to the turmoil. I repented on the spot, asked God to forgive me, and then went that all-important step further: I released My Idea of A Happy Family to him, to do with as he will.

Jump to today, when I frantically looked for a charm that fell off my bracelet. (You didn't think I'd start with charms, if there was no connection to my point, did you?) I'd been wearing the charms on a charm holder around my neck instead of one at a time, but the charm holder was getting heavy. I got a bracelet and took it to Ye Olde Jeweler (that's not the real name, but it's the oldest jewelry store in town, where I got my ears pierced, where my mother bought the gold hoops she gave me on my wedding day. She worked at a jewelry store before she got married and knew a good one when she saw it) but they disappointed abysmally. I picked up the un-attached charms and the bracelet after a full month of inactivity, and decided to put them on myself.

Apparently my attachment skills are not perfect. I found one in the car this morning and purposed to fix it. When I laid out the bracelet to begin I saw, to my horror, than another one was missing, one of my very favorites. Most of the charms represent things from my childhood or motherhood but this one represented me now, represented my passion for writing. A tiny silver typewriter, center stage on the bracelet, gone. I crawled around the floor with a flashlight looking under things. I crawled around a long time. I made several trips to the driveway and to the car.

Finally I gave up, releasing the lost typewriter into the cosmos. Not that I was going to give it up entirely, of course, because I really liked it. I found its twin online and ordered a replacement, figuring that if I find the original, I will love having two typewriters hanging on my bracelet, but I'm certainly not going to do without one at all.

What does my charm bracelet have to do with my idolatrous notions about family? I think it is that attachment to things and people we love is important. We need to take care of them. I know that I had taken care of my bracelet. Knowing I hadn't soldered the jump rings as a jeweler would (I assume) I was especially careful not to catch the bracelet on anything. All week long, since I attached the charms, I have been conscious of the fact that I must use care. And I STILL managed to unhook two, and lose one, presumably, altogether. A failure in bracelet protection.

I've been a failure at creating and maintaining My Idea of a Happy Family, too. There are the relatives who won't talk to me despite attempts to reconcile. There are the ones who hold grudges for things that were said or done long ago. There are those who no longer need me or particularly want me, at least a good bit of the time. There are those from whom I have needed to distance myself a bit, so that they can grow up. People have moved, and moved on, and that is as it should be. While I focused on lots of Good Things, I've neglected the Best, at times. Not all of the time, but here and there

I don't mean to paint a dismal picture - we had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner yesterday with many of the family sitting around the table, missing those who couldn't be there. We're a mess, perhaps, but a mess that loves each other. We're stumbling along, but we're helping one another, too. Many, many things, and people, and relationships, to celebrate! But as a unit, we don't look like My Idea of a Happy Family all of the time. Actually, not any of the time! And that's okay. It's not our job to look like YOUR idea of a happy family either! Maybe your idea is the white picket fence, Mom, Dad, two kids, a dog and a cat. That's not my idea, but whatever yours is or mine is, it's probably not the reality we live with every day.

This isn't about beating myself up or feeling guilty. There are too many variables involved where families are concerned. There have been times when I was doing all I knew to do and doing it right, and others were dropping the ball, so to speak. I'm not perfect - not a perfect daughter, wife, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, aunt, cousin, niece, mother, grandmother, you name it - but neither is anyone else perfect in their particular roles in my family. I own my mistakes. I don't own theirs. And we aren't unique...no one is perfect, anywhere, anybody.

My point...yes, there really is one...is that when we see an issue of pride (My Idea vs. God's plan at work in the universe) there needs to be release. We can frantically try to hold on, as I did while I crawled around the floor looking for my little lost typewriter, or we can come to point of release, as I did sitting on the bench. "Okay, this is what I've been doing wrong. I'm sorry. Please forgive me, please fix it." That doesn't mean we do without, however; it means we get a new start. I can approach the family I have with more grace than when I wanted them to fit into a space that wasn't really made for them (even if it was a really nice space).

I can order a new charm. I can extend grace to others who have their own flawed concepts of what our family should look like, what I should look like, people who don't always take the best care of the things and people they genuinely care for, just like me. And I can trust God to create order out of chaos, joy out of sadness, fulfillness out of emptiness, his plan as opposed to mine.

Maybe this is all too convoluted, too much thinking for a Friday night. But that's okay, too.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2013

Why "Breaking Bad" Could Be Real, But "The Walking Dead" Could Not

2013-11-13T14:41:00.002-08:00

The title sums up the subject matter pretty succinctly, I think. Breaking Bad, the ten-time Emmy AMC that just recently completed its five-year run with an outstanding, dare-I-say-perfect final episode, could actually happen. It made the Guinness Book of World Records for being the highest rated television series of all time, so obviously the writing and acting were top-notch. But it could also be true.
award-winning television show on

There are, as we all know, high school chemistry teachers. I don't know how many there are in the United States. In 2010 there were about 25,000 secondary schools and 33,000 private schools. Let's say half of those included high school grades, 16,500.

That's 41,500 high schools, most of which would have chemistry teachers. Or at the very least, science teachers. Out of those, it's completely believable that some would be diagnosed with cancer. And it is completely believable that out of those, there might be a few who would be tempted to go out with a bang, make some fast cash, leave their families a legacy. Possible that former students would convince them to cook meth, and possible that - given the right personality and ego constraints - the teachers would strive to make the Best Meth Ever.

Would these few gain the notoriety of a Walter White/Heisenberg? Probably not, but it's possible. Would any one teacher team up with someone so dysfunctional and lovable as Jesse Pinkman? Again, possible. Possible to have a family member in the FBI. Possible to have a pregnant wife and disabled son. All possible. Possible to have the greed and easy money change the teacher to the point that he (I don't see it as probable for a female teacher. I apologize if this sounds sexist. Just my opinion.) changes in ways he never anticipated, becoming as violent as the violence provoked by the meth he cooks so skillfully.

All possible. Which made "Breaking Bad" so addictive. We watched, hoping that Walter White would stay true to himself and to his family but also hoping that he didn't get caught. By the time the series ended, we knew that justice had to prevail. The final episode expertly tempered justice with mercy - Walt died, but not from a long, painful final battle with cancer. He died, but saved Jesse's life. He died, but also provided for his family's future. Jesse escaped, to change into the good young man of which we came to believe him capable.

Hank and Mike and some others we would have liked to see survive didn't make it, but again, not only possible but extremely believable. You can't get mixed up in the crystal methamphetamine industry without some serious consequences. Skylar, Walter White's wife, was conflicted - also believable and possible - but she emerged virtually unscathed. Well, except for being a widow, losing a brother-in-law, knowing she condoned and connived right along with Walt, etc. etc. etc.

"The Walking Dead," however, as well-written and as well-acted as it has been and continues to be, is a fantasy.

"Could there be zombies?" my grandchildren ask.

"No," I answer. Aside from medical science, which is also on the side of my argument, the Bible says that it is appointed for men to die once, followed by judgement (Hebrews 9:27). If a person could die, but not really, this wouldn't be accurate. \

But, you say, there are a few instances in the Bible where people didn't die, they were just taken into heaven. What about them? There are, actually, two occurrences. Enoch "walked with God and was not, for God took him" (Genesis 5:24) and Elijah was taken up into a whirlwind on a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2:8). BUT many scholars believe that the two witnesses John prophesied about in the book of the Revelation (chapter 11) are Enoch and Elijah. They get killed. Their one time.

We live, we die, we face judgement. According to the Bible, those who trust in the saving sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, live forever. Given the choice between being in heaven where there is no pain or suffering, or returning to earth as a flesh-eating zombie, I doubt anyone would want to leave the golden gates. And those who are in hell, while I can see why they'd want to return to a better place (earth), maybe scare a few folks, etc., would they return in such numbers? And escape any heavenly plan to thwart them in the form of angels? Demons, or fallen angels, could certainly take the form of zombies - that's the best bet, in my book - but I think they would have more power than slowly trudging along in search of flesh. If the zombies had fire coming out of the nostrils, or had superhuman strength, sure, but television's walkers sort of schlep along. No demonic power in the lot.

Those who don't die in faith, theologically speaking, experience a sort of "forever death", eternal separation from God. The current pope, Pope Francis, has said that all good people will inherit eternal life, not just Catholics. I'm not a Catholic, so I'm hoping he's right. Not just for me, but for a lot of good people I know who haven't (yet) made a decision of their wills to believe in Jesus. They're still at the "he's a good teacher" stage of seeking truth, but I have hope.
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At any rate, there are probably many more reasons why zombies are figments of the imagination and not scientifically or theologically possible. That's just the one I used with my grandkids. They make for a great story, but naaah. I don't think so.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2013

DO SOMETHING. OR NOT.

2013-10-18T15:19:00.000-07:00

September happened, but for various reasons I never got around to writing a blog. Not even one, when I'd like to do two a month. When I was a weekly newspaper columnist, I loved the feedback from raising hackles and pleasing readers (depending on the subject matter or the frame of mind) on a regular basis. My daily poetry blog (www.ellenpoems.blogspot.com) is a challenge and a joy, but that's no excuse for not being a better caretaker for this one.

How do 30 days pass without time or inclination to sit down at the computer and share thoughts that are not poetic (as in A Poem a Day) or the briefest of communication (as in a Facebook post or text)? In a word, they pass stressfully. Pull-the-rug-out-from-under-your-feet stress. Take-the-wind-out-of-your-sail stress. Feel-like-I'm-gonna-scream stress. Not all at once, but several Big Things during the month that slapped me squarely across the face, interspersed (of course) with many more quieter moments of peace and joy.

It would be unfair, even dishonest of me to mention the Big Things, as unsettling as they were, without also mentioning the better things. Did I say the Big Things unsettled? Then the quieter moments of joy did the opposite, settling my spirit and my soul and even my breathing into a rhythm I could sustain and live with.

Now that we are more than halfway into October, some of the Big Things have yet to resolve and (as is my custom) I was becoming impatient and anxious. Perhaps I should set up a conference call. Write a letter. DO SOMETHING. That is the Protestant way, isn't it? The basis for our great work ethic? When all else fails, DO SOMETHING.

It always amazes me that with the hundreds, nay, thousands of Hallmark cards or plaques or posters or bumper stickers I've seen over a lifetime, the relative few that strike a chord and remain locked inside my picayune little brain. One perky little phrase I've seen numerous times and in numerous settings is one attributed to several different speakers: A ship is safe in the harbor, but that is not what ships are made for. The implication is that we need to step out of our comfort zones, take action, etc. etc. blahblahblah. DO SOMETHING.

Looking back at September, I'm thinking that the problem with such quotes, such sound bytes, such syrupy song lyrics, is that they don't take the almost limitless variables into consideration. Maybe the ship needs work. Maybe the crew is on shore leave. Maybe there's a freakin' category 5 hurricane brewing out in the ocean. Doing something doesn't necessarily guarantee doing the most helpful, wisest thing for the long term best of the situation or those involved.

But I was still caught up in DO SOMETHING mode and decided to try the ole' flip-through-the-Bible trick employed by countless new believers and also (if they will admit it) seasoned believers as well. It's done like this:

Get into a bit of a panic over some particular decision or circumstance.
Pray and ask God for wisdom.
When it doesn't come immediately, pray that he will lead you through the Bible. You're muddled, human, sinful, stoopid from time to time and often hard of hearing when it comes to spiritual matters, so you assume that he's talking and you just aren't getting it. Since handwriting on the wall seems to have been a one-time event in the book of Daniel (thank you, Jesus...I wouldn't want God's admonitions to ME written on the wall for everyone to see, would you?) the next best thing would seem to be (you reason) the Word.
Turn the Bible upside down, if you like, so you don't inadvertently flip to the verse you're really hoping to find that says "Smite them, O Lord!" Then read the direct word of wisdom that will either fit your needs exactly or will be so incredibly off-topic that you will throw the Bible down impatiently and fume.

By the way, when I was still in my 20s, a young mother of four on the mission field with my husband in India, I heard a wonderful sermon on the subject of having a "life verse." A lot of people seemed to know what their "life verse" was, but I was clueless. I prayed for God to show me, and I turned right to Deuteronomy 6:5: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Really?

No, I didn't say that. I was pleased, in fact. What's not to like about that? It's comfortably vague while being fierce in its implications.

But I digress. Today, I went the flip-through route before doing something I might regret. Doing something without thinking it through had been one of the problem variables in one situation, and I didn't want to make it worse. I prayed. I flipped....

...right to King David's psalm of thanks in 1 Chronicles 16 (New International Version):

8 Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name;
    make known among the nations what he has done.
9 Sing to him, sing praise to him;
    tell of all his wonderful acts.
10 Glory in his holy name;
    let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.
11 Look to the Lord and his strength;
    seek his face always.

12 Remember the wonders he has done,
    his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced,
13 you his servants, the descendants of Israel,
    his chosen ones, the children of Jacob.
14 He is the Lord our God;
    his judgments are in all the earth.

15 He remembers[a] his covenant forever,
    the promise he made, for a thousand generations,
16 the covenant he made with Abraham,
    the oath he swore to Isaac.
17 He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree,
    to Israel as an everlasting covenant:
18 “To you I will give the land of Canaan
    as the portion you will inherit.”

19 When they were but few in number,
    few indeed, and strangers in it,
20 they[b] wandered from nation to nation,
    from one kingdom to another.
21 He allowed no one to oppress them;
    for their sake he rebuked kings:
22 “Do not touch my anointed ones;
    do my prophets no harm.”

23 Sing to the Lord, all the earth;
proclaim his salvation day after day.
24 Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous deeds among all peoples.

25 For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;
    he is to be feared above all gods.
26 For all the gods of the nations are idols,
    but the Lord made the heavens.
27 Splendor and majesty are before him;
    strength and joy are in his dwelling place.

28 Ascribe to the Lord, all you families of nations,
    ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
29 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
    bring an offering and come before him.
Worship the Lord in the splendor of his[c] holiness.
30     Tremble before him, all the earth!
    The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.

31 Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;
    let them say among the nations, “The Lord reigns!”
32 Let the sea resound, and all that is in it;
    let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them!
33 Let the trees of the forest sing,
    let them sing for joy before the Lord,
    for he comes to judge the earth.

34 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
    his love endures forever.
35 Cry out, “Save us, God our Savior;
    gather us and deliver us from the nations,
that we may give thanks to your holy name,
    and glory in your praise.”
36 Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
    from everlasting to everlasting.

Then all the people said “Amen” and “Praise the Lord.”

You are forgiven if you respond to this with a scratch of the head and a nasal "Huh?" What does that have to do with the wisdom I was seeking? Which I need? I submit to you that it has EVERYTHING to do with it.

Forget the problems, the variables, the ornery people who simply refuse to do what we what and when we want. Forget all that. Remember God. Remember what he has done. Consider what he has promised to do. And beyond that, give thanks. For the problems, the variables, the ornery people who simply refuse to do what we what and when we want. Give thanks because God is God, and he is worthy of our thanks, regardless of everything else.

I love that David ends with a heart cry for help - even kings need help; maybe especially, kings need help - but he's laid the groundwork for almost two pages of praise, piling it on, reminding God of his own greatness. By comparison nothing we fume over is beyond minuscule and yet God is concerned with even those tiny things with trouble his children.

There was no rumble of thunder, no shout of "Eureka!" I didn't even shout, with all the people of Israel "Amen" and "Praise the Lord."

I didn't do anything. And that was the whole point.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2013