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Anything Before
My story...
Part 1 Part 2
Part 3 Part 4
Part 5 Part 6
Baylor University is really, in all seriousness, an excellent school. The professors actually encourage thinking as opposed to regurgitating.
This alone makes it almost misleading to call it a university.
You can wear shorts almost all the time at Baylor and you can go out at night and sit by the fountain and lay on the floating concrete blocks and stare at the stars. You can also climb the fountain and slide down with the water, but there are little "speed bumps" so it's better to use a piece 0f cardboard or something for the ride. And when you're done and all wet, you can go lay on the mall - a huge grassy strip about a quarter of a mile long between the fountain and the library (only in Texas can you "waste" so much land!).
You can run your hands over the old red brick salvaged from the first Baylor building and you can sit on Judge Baylor's knee. You can pull honeysuckle from the vines in the garden where Jesus is and you can hear your heart beat in the Armstrong-Browning Library.
You can go to the BSU (Baptist Student Union) and get a free coke anytime and you can get free Dr. Pepper floats in the Student Union Building, in honor of the hometown cola. When the Bears win, they light the entire dome of Pat Kneff Hall bright green - you can see it from the interstate! - and the bells will ring out "That Good Ol' Baylor Line!"
Everyone skips classes - even the professors - on Dia del Oso. We play games on the intramural fields and the Noze Brothers paint all the noses of the statues on campus pepto-bismal pink (including Jesus' nose!). "The Rope" will be available for those who enjoy a good spoof on The Lariat, our school paper, and we will make merry into the wee hours of the morning!
You can sail a sunfish on the Arm of God and dangle your legs through the rails of the Suspension Bridge and listen to Trout Fishing in America when they come to the annual Music Festival. You can jog on the Bear Trail and if you're lucky, you can even feed Oreos to the bears!
My first year at Baylor was an adjustment - which is to say an adjustment like the kind the San Andreas Fault goes through on occasion. The sheer force of class adjustment (social class) sent me skittering through the semesters like a forgotten cup of Starbucks moments after it leaves the roof of a moving car. Add to that the religious challenges laid down by that department, the political challenges I encountered in debate classes and the challenge of clear thinking presented by the exceedingly unfamiliar (to this little country girl) inner-city.
For whatever reason, Mission Waco lost me the first year. I volunteered to help with a Teen Club. I was placed with two other students who overtime developed a severe case of sanity and left. I was the only stupid fool still showing up and trying...to do...something.
I made Kool-Aid. And brought cookies. So, you know, I always had a crowd.
I have no idea what I said to them. Really. I have no memory of it.
I remember Joey and Christina and Christine. But I don't remember what I said.
Anyway, that was a very hard, very lonely place to be.
But it just so happened that the rest of the clubs, which were in regular contact with each other, were taking a summer trip to Colorado. And it just so happened that someone found my information and remembered that "hey, wasn't there another club out there, somewhere?"
So they called me and asked me to go. I had never been to camp before. In fact, I had never camped before. Perhaps we didn't need to do that, since we were so country anyway, but whatever. I felt excited about camp - and weird to be excited since I was suppose to be a counselor and have it all together.
Also, I'd never been to Colorado. I'd never seen mountains.
I remember the kids we took from Waco bouncing in their seats asking, "Is that a mountain?" as we drove by (what I now know as) small hills. But on that day, I was asking the same question, just too embarrassed to ask it outloud. The other counselors (who took regular ski-trips to Colorado with their filthy rich families) would laugh and say, "No not yet!"
I was so torn trying to act like I knew what a mountain looked like when in reality I was just as clueless as our kids.
I fell asleep in the breath-taking expanse of the Texas panhandle and woke up the next morning in a Colorado cathedral.
We stopped for breakfast at a little restaurant. To say it was "nestled" in the mountains would be misleading. More accurately, I would say it looked like a rare oddity that had found the only flat spot to land for miles. Every direction one could look, the darkest greens and deepest blues and purest whites and strongest grays patch-worked their way into a stain glass artwork that squeezed my heart so tight my ears started ringing.
The saddest thing about this memory is that I still felt the need to pretend that I had seen mountains before. I wished I had learned to be real before I saw my first mountain.
I think I would have sung. Or shouted! And laughed! I would have reached up to them and stretched as far as I could. And I wouldn't have blinked back the tears.
I remember watching the other counselors that week. They has spent a year together, working with kids and homeless guys and meeting for church under an interstate bridge. They were so...real. They were so real with each other and so in love with each other. And laughed like I had never heard people laugh before. And they were comfortable with each other.
And I wanted to be a part of this more badly than I had ever wanted anything before.
posted by Headless-in-GR @ 1/31/2005 07:19:23 PM | (0) comments
With Thanks
A continuation of my story - click below to start at the beginning (a very good place to start!).
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Mt. Pleasant is a small town. Sometimes we have a nice restaurant to go to. Other times, the nice restaurants have gone out of business. Then, we just have to wait - wait for the next poor sucker who's willing to risk it all and start a new one. In the mean time, we do have a McDonald's.
That's were I worked from the time I was 16 until I was 20. I started out working in the drive-thru. Here are some tips to help you if you're ordering in a drive-thru.
1) If your vehicle has a diesel engine - turn it off. Trust me, I can't hear you. (If you don't know if your car has a diesel engine - it doesn't, city slicker.)
2) Don't honk! Or I will spit in your drink! (Just kidding, but I will think bad things about you while my eardrum bleeds down my neck.)
3) The person working drive-thru is usually talking to three different people - minimum - at the same time. Be patient - it's a virtue. (Besides, you couldn't do it.)
4) Don't hit on me and think I will fall for it. What? My voice turns you on? Come on! I know all you want is a free apple pie.
5) Pay attention to which window I tell you to go to. It matters.
6) Don't ask me to wait and then tell really crass jokes about McDonald's employees as if I can't hear - or can, but won't say anything.
7) Don't ask me to wait and then fart out loud. Yes, I can hear that.
8) Don't pick your nose. Just don't. Ever.
9) If you don't know what you want, I sure as hell don't. If you're confused, drive circles around the building until you figure it out, but don't sit "in my ear" for 30 minutes trying to figure out if Stacey likes mustard.
10) NO! We DON'T have that Happy Meal Toy!
I was quickly promoted to manager...well, you know, it's a small town...
I learned that some people want a list of things to do. And other people want to see a vision and then work towards it. Both are valid. I learned that the rules should serve the people, not the other way around. I learned that you should never accept lies, even when it's company policy. No, the customer isn't always right. I learned that you must roll up your sleeves and start the meat and toast the buns and all the while never lose sight of the kids on the playground. I learned that having the respect and love of people who work with you is worth more than any paycheck. I learned that soft-serve ice cream makes most everyone feel better. And that Chicken McNuggets are really good with Big Mac sauce.
Well, they are!
I dated two guys - well, two and half guys, in my highschool/community college days. The first one moved away, but he did ask me to marry him. I guess he forgot. Or maybe he's still waiting. The second one was wonderful! He was smart and played the piano and basketball and was in drama. I dated him for a year. We only went out three times though, cause he was from a town quite far away.
I also sorta dated that other guy - the half guy. Well, he wasn't half a guy, but... We went on some dates, so that means we sorta dated - we halfway dated. Of course, he was also gay. But that doesn't make him half a guy. Anyway, I didn't know what "gay" meant back then, so it didn't bother me, you know - no harm, no foul.
Then this funny thing happened. I got mail...from Baylor University.
Baylor was the college that all the preppy, popular kids go to. They all walk around carrying their tennis rackets and wearing Polo...
So anyway, Baylor accepted me. I don't know why. It's the only place I applied to, so when I got accepted, I just went.
I didn't know one damn thing.
No one in my family - extended family - as far as the eye could see, had ever graduated from college. So, I went to college really, really stupid. I packed some clothes...that was good. And I did have a blanket and pillow. I had bought a trunk to store things in (someone told me I'd need that - or maybe I saw it on an after school program). Didn't have towels. Didn't have shampoo. Certainly didn't have pillow shams.
I didn't know what pillow shams were until I met my roommate. Later, this roommate would jump on my bed at 6:30 in the morning and sing "Good morning to YOU, good morning to YOU!" and then rush off to put on her make-up and do her hair before her 9:30 class.
I did know one damn thing - I knew my roommate was a freak.
Actually, most all the girls at Baylor were freaks. "We're on a mission from God - MARRIAGE!"
Anyway, I wanted to do something for God to pay him back for taking care of me, so...I became a religion major and volunteered for an inner-city organization.
Dear God,
I was trying to pay you back, but somehow things got twisted around. I brought you some stuff - like my time and my energy. I gave them to you. I know I gave them, cause I didn't have any left. But, I still don't understand. I think your accounting department made a mistake. I hope I'm not being too presumptuous, but they might have accidentally put the debits in the credit column, cause I... Well, it just seems like I have more than I really am suppose to. It seems like I have more than I started with.
You know what? Why don't you just do the math and let me know what you come up with.
Thanks!
posted by Headless-in-GR @ 1/19/2005 11:24:45 PM | (4) comments
For God Back
A continuation of my story, click to read...
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
I remember in the 4th grade how all the girls stopped playing at recess. The boys continued to play and get dirty and get in fights, but the girls...
They stood in the shade and looked at magazines and talked about boys - particularly Chet Zachery, who was in the 5th grade. They talked about clothes and make-up and sometimes, the really daring girls would raid their mother's make-up bag and bring...lipstick!
Oh the days when someone brought lipstick...
Before the first class was over, EVERYONE knew about it and everyone was jockeying for position with the lip-stick bearer because EVERYONE was hoping to get a chance to color their lips at lunch time. And the morning classes would be filled with so much anticipation and anxiety. Alliances made while working on division problems might be dissolved before we got to word-problems. And the girl with her mother's lipstick held within her hands (or hidden in her locker) the power of social control - nay, perhaps even world domination...
I remember the pull to join the Lipstick Club. Essentially, it was the only reality. ALL the girls were either part of the Lipstick Club, or for the unlucky ones (or poor ones, or colored ones, or dirty ones) - they wished to be part of the club.
I didn't.
Didn't want to be part of the club. Didn't become part of the club.
I still wanted to play - I was the 4th grade, for crying out loud!
But the boys wouldn't play with me because I was a girl (this realization had just begun to dawn on them, as before we played together all the time before) and the girls wouldn't play with me because they didn't play.
And so I became mist - that indefinable, almost intangible, almost invisible thing with the slightest hint of color - white.
All the way through highschool, with a few exceptions, I was simply mist. No one hated me. I wasn't a nerd. I wasn't a geek. I wasn't anything. I just drifted into class, whispered answers to the questions and then dissipated when the bell rung. Everyone just saw right through me.
And of course they would. There was a highschool reality and I was not inside that reality. I made no sense, and like people everywhere, my classmates were only able to see what they had words to talk about.
My dad always says the most important thing you can do for yourself is to never tell yourself lies. Very profound. Of course, he also says...
"You can't rollerskate in a buffalo herd, but you can be happy if you have a mind to."
I have no idea what he's talking about with that one. But the point is, I didn't tell myself lies. I didn't pretend to care about lipstick when I didn't. I didn't pretend to care about Chet Zachery when I didn't.
I'm thankful for the decisions I made. I'm really, really glad.
Here are a two times when I stepped out of the mist.
1) When the really tall, really big football player grabbed my butt while walking down the hall - my first response was to apologize - really, I did, I said, "I'm sorry!" But he just kept walking and laughing with his friends. And then...the sound of books hitting the floor...and I was running after him. I caught him by the back of his collar and threw him up against a wall. And then, I came to my senses and thought, "What am I going to do now?!" He was screaming, "let go of me, bitch!" over and over again. My volleyball coach and my physics teacher were just staring at me. His friends were staring. Everyone was staring. So finally, I said (yeah, you're going want to write this down) -
Don't you EVER do that again!
There's one for the books - a quotable quote if ever there was one.
2) When I made the dance team - suddenly popularity was laid at my feet - the quarterback wanted to date me. I was enough of my own person by that time, that for a while I lived the popular (but good girl) life. And I enjoyed it. But when the popular girls starting making fun of a guy friend of mine from band, I told them to shut up because he was my friend and that was the end of the popularity run.
And all throughout these times, I kept dreaming of horses and telling God that I was so thankful for being rescued and saved and loved that someday...someday I was going to do something for God back.
posted by Headless-in-GR @ 1/13/2005 10:20:33 AM | (0) comments
He Is Looking
A continuation of my story... Click to read
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Once again, I will remind you that real stories are rarely ever neat. With the last post, I offered you hope for the little girl and hope for a God who loves. Today, I will show you that hope rarely springs up without evil attempting to tear it down.
Other things happened once I moved back to the house I had grown up in.
Hell.
Really.
I cannot talk about the metaphysics of it. I cannot explain it. I make no theology (or demonology, as it were) from this part of my story. I only retell it.
I tell it to you.
I was the little girl standing under the pressure of a religious organization that said I was outside the House Of God while I maintained I was inside. I was the little girl standing under the pressure of a religious organization that told me I was less valuable because I was a girl and thus had no hope of ever becoming more valuable. I was a little girl who wasn't sure what it meant to be a family. I was a little girl growing into a woman.
I was very, very fragile.
And evil prowls.
Fear seized me and dark things haunted me from every corner of the house. I would see movement and turn quickly. My eyes struggled to view a reality that they were never taught to view. Like looking at those 3-D pictures, I could feel my eyes straining, searching for something that might have been there.
I survived on very little sleep for at least two years. I ate very little because I believed that the food was poisoned. Death was stalking me. I would walk through the halls and have this awful sense of being followed.
I do not know if you will believe me, but the dark things were able to affect the physical environment. Either the dark things or my fear...or both. All I know was that in my terror, my faith demanded action from God (yes - a demand on God - I know it's blasphemous - but that's what happened).
There is a verse in the book of Psalms. In the King James Bible, it reads like this, "I will both lay me down in peace and sleep for thou, o LORD art with me."
If there was one thing I really, really needed, it was sleep.
The night I read this, my Mom said good night and turned off the lights. Within a very short time, the darkness began morphing from the shadows. I sat up in bed and stared straight at the darkness...
I will both lay me down in peace and sleep for the Lord is with me.
I will sleep tonight because the Lord is with me!
Do you remember the part in The Fellowship Of The Ring when the Fellowship is fleeing through a cave pursued by a great, fearsome demon? And suddenly Gandolf stops and wheels about. Staring straight into the eyes of the demon, he bellows -
You Shall Not Pass!
The Lord Is With Me!
The funny thing is, I had no illusion that my life would be spared when I spoke those words to the darkness. I only knew that living or dying, the Lord was with me. And I grasped on to that Truth with all of the force of my being.
In the Lord of the Rings, the ground under the demon creature crumbles and the demon falls away into a great abyss. But as it falls, it grabs the hem of Gandolf's robe and Gandolf is pulled over the edge. Hanging on by his fingers, he looks up at the rest of the Fellowship and in a hoarse, strained voice he says,
"Run, you fools."
And just like that he is gone.
The Fellowship is me - all the aspects of myself. And I was fleeing from a terror. But something in me broke loose, and with the sound of God's voice in my ear, I had faith that sent the demons screaming into the abyss.
But just like Gandolf, a part of me went over the edge as well.
And the last thing I said to the other parts of me was - run, you fools.
And I became centered in the part of me that was falling.
I expected the ground within moments. I expected to hit hard at the bottom of the pit. I expected it for days - for weeks - for months. But I never hit the ground.
Like Gandolf, I fell for ages.
The thing about falling is that at first you still cling to the idea that reality is the ground - the hard substantive stuff - that is what is real. Desperately, like a mad person, you long for the ground. But after falling and falling and falling, space becomes what is real. And you quit trying to define your reality by the passing rock and earth and you start trying to talk about space.
Space isn't empty, you know.
And maybe you're not falling - maybe you're flying. And maybe things aren't getting closer and further - maybe they're getting bigger and smaller. And you begin to see the underpinnings of other peoples' lives - the rocks that they build on. You can't hold anything against them, but you've just seen too many rocks to believe anyone who says they have the only foundation.
You have a part of the only foundation.
Gandolf and the demon have a round 2 and as he tells the story, "I smote mine enemy." And then he begins his trip back - a trip filled with many enemies - but he has changed.
And he is looking to be reunited with the Fellowship.
posted by Headless-in-GR @ 1/11/2005 10:22:04 PM | (0) comments
Pardon Me...S'cuse Me...Pardon Me - Oh! Sorry!
One more interuption - just an FYI - we are still putting this new site together. So, of course, pardon the mess but also as the links to your blogs start showing up, let me know if I messed up the addresses or names or anything.
In fact, if anything's wrong, let me know and I'll blame on Kim, though you can be sure that it's really my fault. Kim knows stuff about stuff, but I don't... know...anything about stuff. When I look at html code, I sense that I may really be the proverbial bull in the china shop.
Ok, I'm out.
posted by Headless-in-GR @ 1/11/2005 09:53:54 PM | (0) comments
From Beneath The Ground
A continuation of my story... Click to read Part 1 and Part 2.
Childhood Part 2
My parents divorced. I don't know why. The only thing I can tell you is my story. They separated. I went with my mom to live in the city. They got divorced. And then... They got remarried. And we moved back to the country.
There were times I was frightened. There were times I was sad. But those times were not very prevalent. For the most part, I continued to play and imagine and read and live my life as I had before. I remember the time of the divorce as a time of emotional indifference - apart from specific instances, I was largely unaffected by it. However, once my parents remarried and I was back at home, the foundations began shaking.
I'm certain that on some sub-conscious level, my security had been shaken by the divorce and perhaps the fruit of insecurity was delayed and not seen until after my parents remarried.
Other things changed upon moving back. We left the Lutheran church and moved to small, rural Baptist church where Brother Johnny would stand up in the pulpit and scream at his tiny flock for an hour a week and then conclude by calling them to the loving place of salvation - just come forward and pray the prayer of a sinner's heart! And we would sing...
"Just as I am and waiting not, to rid my soul of one dark blot..."
And we would sing 40 verses of it. And when we ran out of verses, we'd have "just the music" and then we do the "ooo's" and Brother Johnny would stop screaming and start speak softly - pleading for that one lost lamb.
I think he was probably waiting for me.
See, I couldn't possibly be heaven-bound. I hadn't gotten "saved." I hadn't walked down the aisle. I hadn't been immersed in the waters of a "believer's baptism." I was just a little girl who loved God. And the thing is, by this time, I had already begun to wrestle with God and Truth and the reality of the world. I had already been confronted with the reality that to love God demanded something of my life.
Of course, none of this mattered to Brother Johnny. He only had one reality - one framework to think with and it was the framework of a Baptist. I don't hate him. From within his reality, he loved me and was compassionate to me. He was hoping the best for me in the best way he knew how...
"To thee whose blood could cleanse each spot, O Lamb of God, I come...I come."
Another element of my changing reality was that it became increasing clear in my small Baptist church that women were not on equal footing with men. And it became increasing clear that I was a woman.
See, while at the Lutheran church, I had begun to...I don't even know what it's called! I did the thing were you walk up the aisle and light the candles and bow before God and then the pastor comes up to speak. It's a shame that I don't even know what that's called... Anyway, the magnitude of the responsibility of that role awed me. And I filled my responsibility with all the reverence I could find in my little girl heart.
I served God. I served the Church on God's behalf. I brought God's holy fire to his people. I filled a sacred role, and the sacredness of the role left a mark on my soul.
So...
So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered in the Baptist church that God really didn't want women serving him - that is of course, unless they were under the covers with a man - I MEAN - NO WAIT! I mean under the COVERING of a man! What was I thinking?! Whoa. I need some more coffee...
Just a minute, I'll be back...
Ok, I'm back...
I remember reading some Bible verse that said, "Blessed is the man who loves the Lord" or something like that. And so it was that even here, in "God's Love Letter to Me," I could not escape the reality that it was men who were addressed by God, not women.
I could not escape the reality that God's Love Letter was addressed to someone else.
So on that day when I read "Blessed is the man" - my heart reached its limit. From the depths of my being, a wail - a cry - the sound of a lover scorned...
Why is it always men who are blessed? What about women? It's you who made me this way! If it takes being a man to get your love, then I would have chosen that! Tell me, God, if I love you, would you bless me?
And then I offered God this deal. I closed my eyes and said, "If this is also about women - if it's true that the woman who loves you can also be blessed, then will you change the words? Make it say, "blessed is the woman..."
I sat.
I told God I would accept the answer.
And I granted God the right to do what God wanted to do.
And the words on the page read,
Blessed is the woman...
From beneath the ground, a shoot unfolded and reached for the sunlight.
posted by Headless-in-GR @ 1/11/2005 10:33:08 AM | (0) comments
We Interupt This Story...
I'm moving! To a new site! It's cool! It's sexy! You can't wait to see it!
REALLY!
Except it's not ready yet...so consider this a forcast of changing patterns.
My new domain is www.soclosetoreal.com
More later. Take care!
posted by Headless-in-GR @ 1/08/2005 01:05:41 PM | (6) comments
And Then My Life Changed
(Continued from "I Am That Child")
Childhood Part 1
It's always easier and quicker to revert to reductionism to tell a story. I could tell you here that as a child I was a tomboy. Or I could tell that I was a good little girl who tried to do everything right. Or I could tell that I loved horses and dreamed of them endlessly. Or I could tell you that I played with barbies and doll houses. Or I could tell you that I was riding a bike (without training wheels) at three and beginning my addiction to speed (not the substance...speed like fast...you know...!).
I could paint myself as the athletic kid, the obedient child, the girly girl, the dreamer or the tomboy.
Or I could just tell you that all these things - plus others - were true.
I think I had the best childhood possible. The worst thing that happened to me was that my mother would make come inside and take a bath. And even that wasn't bad once I was wet - cause the washcloth is a dolphin and the bar of soap is a ship and there are whirlpools and waterfalls!
I went to the Lutheran Church and was an angel in the Christmas nativity, which we held outside in the freezing cold Texas nights! I remember being ever so careful not to get hot chocolate on my white angel costume. I remember the song "Holy, Holy, Holy" and the taste of communion wafers and wine. I remember felt boards and felt sheep and singing the Don Williams song "I Believe in You" with a group that gathered before Sunday School. I have vague memories of the adults laughing at my enthusiatic singing - my very enthusiastic singing.
My parents bought me a jungle-gym when I was 5 or 6 years old. Before long I was doing flips off the monkey bars. It only took a little encouragement from the boy down the road to get me to build "ramps" and see how far I could jump my bike. The longest skidmark was also a proud accomplishment. Riding a wheelie was the envy of us both and we tried and became somewhat accomplished at this feat as well.
But almost every breath I took was colored with horses. Great, glorious horses - wild and strong, fast and powerful. Their manes tossing in the wind. Their breath coming out in columns of steam. And I ran like they did - wild through the woods. I loved to run fullout through parts of the woods that I didn't know, letting obstacles fly up in front of me and making split second decisions - jump over the thorn bush, duck under the limb, to the left of the tree, straight on through the creek.
Before long, I had my own horse. The sweet molasses smell of his breath and the green drool he'd leave on the front of my shirt when he rested his head on my shoulder were familiar and loved. Nothing about a horse stinks. Nothing at all. I think my favorite smell in the world is the smell of a barn - a horse barn. Cows stink. Most definitely.
I was a good girl. I wanted my mom to be pleased with me more than anything in the world. If she wanted to take a nap and needed me to sit quietly on the bed and read books for an hour, I would. I tried to do everything she wanted me to do.
I climbed trees. I played with dolls.
I loved books. I loved puzzles. I loved to color. I loved grilled cheese sandwiches. I loved my kitties and my puppy and my horse and my mom and my dad and my new baby sister and Jesus too.
And then my life changed.
posted by Headless-in-GR @ 1/06/2005 05:39:25 AM | (5) comments
I Am That Child
To write one's story is ultimately a self-centered thing. As images of my life wisp about me now, I know it's me who really longs to understand their significance. How did they bring me here today, to this internet cafe with my laptop and my caramel latte? With the painted daisies and the little girl who just smiled at me? With the rain outside and Whitney Houston singing about her longing to dance with someone?
Me too, girlfriend.
Well, I suppose it doesn't have to be self-centered. I could tell you my story because I want to teach some lessons or because I want to show you how faithful God is...
So, to those who pass here, if you learn then may you be blessed by it. If you see God, may you be drawn to love. But I won't pull any punches and I won't gloss it over. I'm writing this to tell myself the story. When I am finished, I will sit back and wonder what happens next.
How long until the next release? Oh, you're kidding! I hate waiting! I wanna know what happens next!
My Parents
My mother was born and raised in LaVaca County in Texas. I once found a book that charted immigrant concentrations in the United States. One page would say "Polish" and then beneath it would be map of the United States with counties colored and coded for Polish concentrations. The next page would say "French" and so forth. LaVaca County is the third largest concentration (per capita) of Bohemian Czechs in the United States. My mother's family was Bohemian - half by lineage and the other half (German) by acculturation.
Do you know what Kolochies are? Cheese Kolochies will make you cry. And the sausage in LaVaca county will make you...well, if you're not careful it will make the inhabitant of an early grave.
The other influence in LaVaca County is, of course, Mexican. There is plenty of Mexican blood in my family now, though I personally didn't get any of it (damn!).
When you think of my mom, think colors. Her heritage is colorful. At her best, she is colorful and her death is being colorless. Though out my childhood, she painted. Oil on canvas was her formal medium, but she loved charcoal and chalk as well. When I see her charcoal and chalk drawings of me as a little girl, how can I doubt that I wasn't the most loved child on the planet? And that is how she is at her best - someone who touches her world and leaves it more beautiful than it was before she came.
My father is what blue-state elitists fear the most - uncultured and unconcerned about it. He's poor white trash, a backwater hillbilly country boy who loves God and country and apple - no wait - pumpkin pie. His heritage is a little less clear, but beyond a doubt, there are high doses of what is today the United Kingdom. I don't know if it's English, Scottish or Irish. I'm not sure and am somewhat unconcerned - though I recognize that this is a hanging offence in the UK. Another certain piece of his heritage is American Indian. Regardless, the influences of these different cultures had become swirled into one worldview by the time my Dad was born and essentially, if you want to understand my Dad, you have to understand Northeast Texas. And you have to understand how my Dad plants his feet there and refuses to budge even as he is called to places all over the country as perhaps the top engineer in his field in the US.
Northeast Texas is not wide open plains. It is thick woods with thicker underbrush. It is the home of deep, wide muddy rivers and bands of wild horses and wilder hogs. If you ever meet either group, pray they have no young ones with them or that you truck is unlocked and two feet away. To die by wild boar is not something enviable and it happens. There are also "big cats" that live there. Even today, there is a "big cat" (mountain lion, panther?) that lives in the woods of my dad's house. My dad has seen him. The tracks this cat leaves reveals paws larger than my dad's hands.
That's pretty damn big.
The people of Northeast Texas had their oil boom and they continue to farm and ranch - though to do this, they have to clear large swathes of land. A view from the roads reveals acres of pasture land dotted with brown and white cattle and hedged in behind by the beginning of the woods.
They rodeo in Northeast Texas. Tobacco is your friend, but only the bad boys drink. Everyone's Baptist and anyone who isn't, is suspect. Methodists, Catholics and Hindus are all on the same level - the group of people who probably won't make it to heaven. The women are beautiful and never go without make-up and the most beautiful women are the ones who rodeo too...while wearing make-up.
My dad managed to not piss off too many of his teachers and made it to graduation. After graduating, he thanked God that he'd never have to go to school anymore and went off to work for power companies. Before long, he was running the show. Though his teachers would never have believed it, my dad was brilliant. So brilliant in fact, that General Electric hired him as an engineer though he'd never been to college.
And so it was, that these two people got married and after seven years they had a child.
I am that child.
posted by Headless-in-GR @ 1/04/2005 04:03:56 PM | (7) comments
First Things First
Your comments are gone. Gone! Gone! Gone!
"A cry is heard...Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they are no more."
All of your wonderful comments have been wiped out and I am inconsolably grieved. I ache. Writing today for the first time since losing your comments, I can only compare myself to a funeral parlor beautician. I'm painting the face of the dead.
What is my blog without you?
Return to me.
posted by Headless-in-GR @ 1/04/2005 03:47:31 PM | (1) comments
Inside My Head
I started this blog because...
Well, I could give you all kinds of lovely reasons but really, I started it because my younger, much more hip, computer savvy, East-coast educated, riding-the-trains sister (with those cute little wire-rimmed glasses and knit skull caps that she buys at second hand stores) had one and so clearly I had to keep up! So one Christmas vacation in College Station, Texas she helped me set up a blog. The original title was "Ruminations of a Headless Horse[wo]man."
Ruminations
Did you know that I play the guitar? I do. Only when needed, though. I never pick it up otherwise. I am not a true musician. The worship pastor at my church, Wayne, is a true musician. It's kinda like this: If Wayne were all alone in the woods and there was a guitar, would he play it? And the answer is unequivocally YES.
So here's another question: If I was all alone in the woods and there was a blade of grass and a tree to lie under, would I ruminate? And the answer is YES.
I think a lot. And I'm not bragging, because sometimes you can think too much - and I do. But I love what I think about! I really do! I love to think about people and the realities they create. I love to think about what God is thinking about. Don't you wonder sometimes? What is God thinking?! I do. I wonder about what is real and what is true and the nature of lies and the substance of The Good, of mysteries and of things everyone thinks they already know. I'm curious about choice and freedom and this feeling of anticipation that tells me that all of humanity is rollin' on like a freight train towards...something. And if I'm feeling really brave, I will cautiously, tenatively dip my toes in the pool of hope and wonder if people drown here or if it's a portal to another reality.
I wonder about faith. Why faith? (Really. Big. Pause.)
And do you think when John, the Apostle of Jesus, says "God is love" that he speaking of the essence of God? Maybe the three Persons of the Trinity (or more - who says we've met them all?) are held together in this excruciating, incredible Love and when we pray to God, we are praying to their relationship? And maybe relationship isn't a thing, maybe it's a personal noun. Maybe it's Relationship. God. Love.
And what does that mean for us when we Love? If I Love you, and you Love me, have we birth a new personal noun? A new being? A Me-You Being? And then what does that mean for the Me-God Love, or dare I say...the Me-God Being? But then doesn't that shed some different light on the whole "life after death" question? There is now a Me-God Being, and though I (alone) am mortal and will die and God is immortal and will not die, there's this sticky little problem of the Me-God Being. What become of it if the "Me" part ceases to exist in death?
What if...what if that's a message of the cross of Jesus? God participates in our reality - in our dying - and I participate in God's reality - in immortal living. And thus we share our being - we are a Shared Being?
See what I mean about thinking? If I am all alone in an internet cafe with a computer, will I think and write down all my thoughts? YES.
So, overkill on the explanation, but I think you understand why I would name it "Ruminations of a Headless Horse[wo]man."
Headless
The issue of "headship" is largely a non-issue in most parts of what we call the "Western World."
When I've spoken to people who are not involved with the more conservative churches - or church at all - they are often shocked to discover there are actually people out there who still believe in hierarchical relationships between men and women. But inside the church is another thing. Many churches, I'm embarrassed to say, either actively promote "headship" (hierarchical relationships in church and family) or the give silent assent to this framework.
If you are not apart of the world that believes this, then you will find this conversation quite strange.
My apologies.
If you are a part of this world, then I will quickly (or something close to that) make my case for being Headless - or rejecting the ideology of headship.
Starting with Genesis - God creates humans in his image and gives them the command to rule the earth and care for it. He gives this command to the humans, not to the man. He does not in anyway command the man to rule the woman.
He creates woman as man's "helper." The word for help is used 23 times in the Hebrew. Twice it refers to the woman. Twice it refers to a military ally. All other times it refers to God. Therefore, to claim that helper means "someone under you" you are then concluding that God is under you.
The Genesis account of marriage declares that the man should leave his father and mother and join with his wife. This is indicative of a matriarchal society, not a patriarchal society as with the rest of the Old Testament, where the women get married and leave their father and mother to join with the husband.
Eve did not choose to "eat the apple" independently of Adam. The Scripture clearly says that Adam (the man) was right there with her while she spoke with the serpent.
After the fall, God tells the woman that her husband will rule over her. He does NOT command it to be so, he is stating the case. In other words, "now that you have sinned, your husband will rule over you." This is NOT a desirable state as it is directly connected with the sin.
There were several women in the Old Testament who spoke for God - the most obvious one was Deborah - who was a judge and a prophetess. The Scriptures tell us that she "ruled Israel" during the time of her judging. Thus, the claim of Scripture is the a woman ruled the people of God and was God's spokeperson to the people - without any mention of a man who was "ruling" her.
It is during the time of exile and in the book of Esther that we find the only time in Scripture where the husband is told to be the "head of the household." The person issuing the command is King Xerxes, who was angry at his queen for not agreeing to be "oggled" by the king's drunken party guest.
In the New Testament, Jesus included women as his disciples. True, there were no women chosen to be apostles by Jesus, but later in the New Testament there is a record of a woman apostle. Furthermore, Jesus' choosing of apostles was extrodinarily symbolic - as was many of the things he did. His baptism and departure to the desert for forty days is clearly symbolic of the exodous of the Jews from Egypt. He (or Scripture) is claiming that he is the "True Israelite." His chosing of the twelve apostles is also an act of symbolism indicative of the twelve tribes. In order to make this clearer, ask yourself what the apostles had that the other disciiples (such as the women who followed Jesus) did not have. When Jesus sent out his disciples (women too) he gave the disciples the power to cast out demons and preach the word. He told his disciples (women too) that his teachings were hidden from the crowds, but would be revealed to them. Even at the "Last Supper" Jesus is surrounded by his disciples (women too) - not apostles only, regardless of what Da Vinci painted (or was that Mary Magdelene? Joke!).
The first people Jesus commissions to spread the good news of his resurrection and our new life are women.
Jesus gives the gift of the Spirit to the disciples, including women.
In the book of Acts, the Spirit is poured out on ALL of the disciples.
The powerful couple of Priscilla and Aquilla teach as partners - and in fact it is possible to read that it was Pricilla that "lead" the instruction of Apollos of the fullness of the Gospel, while Aquilla assisted.
Women are constantly mentioned as "co-workers" with Paul, implying equality with Paul, instead of being referred to as something lesser.
There are records of women deacons.
There is even a record of a woman apostle - though her name was changed to a masculine name for 400 years after the Reformation.
In Ephesians 5, most translations of the Bible add words here and subtly change the meaning. In most translations, the translators put a subtitle saying something like "Husbands and Wives" and then begin that section by saying "Wives submit to your husbands as unto the Lord." Unfortunately, that is not what the Greek texts say. There actually is no sentence there because there is no verb. The Greek says, literally translated, "wives to your husbands as to the Lord" which we all know is not a sentence. So the big question is, where's the sentence? And then you find that if you back up - past the subtitle that the translators put in there - there is a sentence, which when joined with the verbless phrase, actually makes sense. The sentence - with the phrase attaced - is as follows: "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, wives to your husbands as to the Lord." Then Paul speaks further to the women and then turns to the husbands and says "love your wives." It is still in the context of submitting to one another.
There are adequate records to make a well founded case for the use of the word "head" in the New Testament as "source."
(to be continued...)
posted by Headless-in-GR @ 1/03/2005 08:32:00 AM | (1) comments
Inside My Head
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