MY PATH HAS BEEN A CIRCLE, ALMOST

I was born to a mother and father who were new converts to what many Christian’s say is a cult. For some period of time before their introduction to the Seventh-day Adventist church, they had already begun their spiritual journey. My father had nearly lost an eight-year battle with tuberculosis (he did lose a full lung and one third of the other) and my mother who easily won her battle with the disease found her life’s calling in it. In the 30’s and 40’s you needed places like Weimar Sanitarium to win that battle and after my mother did, she left to study to become a nurse, then returned to help save my fathers life, to actually save his very spirit, and very much to fall in love with him. I kind of think the latter may have happened prior to her choosing her life’s profession, so one could consider, by giving his love to her, he also initiated the path by which his saving could be possible, and by no other way might I have been so much as a thought.

I was born to parents who where said to not have the ability to produce children. From my father’s perspective, the lack of physical performance, he couldn’t walk 100 feet without being so out of breath as to make one wonder if that were his last 100 feet. My mothers problem was not that she couldn’t out run the dog (any one who saw her at Christmas doing Ingathering duties saw that first hand), but no, it was that she could not carry a child. Towards the late fifties my father actually developed some more stamina as proven by the many times we made the trek from the parking lot at Bald Rock to the perch where you could see the valley. He would only need to stop several times which in his condition should have been a great life’s achievement. I was their first child but my mother could never prove them wrong again as she lost six others after me. Not being deterred, and feeling somewhat blessed at having me, they adopted my bother and “we lived happily ever after”.

At an early age I became aware of the distinct possibility that my father would not live another year. I loved my father more than anyone in the world but because I was much to young to carry that kind of a burden, my defense mechanism was to disallow myself to feel close or love anyone. It has been a difficult process and even today the depth of love and feeling for anyone is shallow, not superficial, just a bit less available, having been depleted so early. However, there can be no question about the level of commitment to people and things that I desire to be close to and in that area I have compensated for the lack of full-blown infatuation common with beautiful and undying love. My father made it a lot longer than he was suppose to, a testament to his will and faith, but a never ending continual experience for me that the end was just around an unseen corner.

I learned to believe in God at an early age, but it was not a complete indoctrination, and by my sixteenth year I was causing teachers and mentors trouble. It was more the concept of legalism that I perceived the message to be and I would not let it stand. I kind of thought I was cool and getting side by side with Jesus. Besides, I was a baseball player and all the neighborhood kids played little league and Friday night ball was out. I’d watch from my bedroom window at my friends playing Friday twilight pickup games before and after the season (baseball was a year around sport). I didn’t like brussel sprouts either! Then we had an after church lunch in the home of the pastor, Elder Ludwig and his family. I was also very observant or maybe I was just an obnoxious young rascal following the older sons of the preacher around. But they did approach the elder and something was agreed upon and there and then that Sabbath afternoon I discovered that, at the very least, it was ok for Seventh-Day Adventists to play catch with gloves and bats. That day at lunch I ate brussel sprouts for the first time with satisfaction because my heroes across the table were devouring them and you can ask my family, much to their chagrin, it is my favorite vegetable. Its funny how things seem to happen to me in clumps. That was also the day that my family was convinced by the good pastor to discontinue the consumption of all meat, and the connection to God was nearly severed for good.

My Christian education lasted twelve years. My eighth grade class was the last and ended a great history of excellent education at the old condemned school called West Liberty, at the corner of Block and W. Liberty, in Gridley CA. Depending how the route was set up each year, some Oroville children, myself included, would take an hour and a half bus ride to school each morning, then back home again each afternoon. I guess that is better than my grandfather saying, “Pennsylvania had lots of snow young man and we walked two miles in it every day.” Latter I found out the old drunk wasn’t even from Pennsylvania. My biological grandfather was but he died several years after my mom was born. What I also learned about the old drunk latter was that he knew almost everything about anything. In my opinion, if anybody made it through the great depression, they were lucky not to have become drunks. He became the high light of the second verse of my song called “Grandma’s Hope”. I completed my Christian education at Rio Lindo Academy, a four-year high school on the Russian River near Healdsburg CA.

Over the following ten years after high school I made God as irrelevant as possible allowing the subject to warrant merit for discussion only if it was initiated by my mother or leverage to gain the attention of a good Christian girl ready for temptation. I’m sure my denials to my mother led to hidden tears and knowledge about something you have little faith in is not a compelling strategy to win the heart of an attraction. Following my discharge from the United States Air Force I got married and started a family. I then started realizing that when one matures, even when its in your late twenties, truthfulness requires you to consider a stand on all things.

When my marriage failed only two years into it and I was left to raise my daughter, the pressure of a real life was beginning to cause my disbelief in God to further take hold and I disintegrated into the under world of our culture, all the while maintaining two jobs, finding a new life’s partner and making a fair attempt at a bonded family. Without the blessing and nurturing of a benevolent spirit, tuning of a lost soul is not possible and the absence from my leadership role in the family unit caused another failure of a family to occur. I was left without any authority to conduct myself in a supportive role my daughter needed and she was free to make decisions without guidance and the temptations of a dark world filtered into her life. I lived in a house with out structure or discipline, no place for a thirteen-year-old girl, and when I suddenly made the attempt to correct it, it ended. She was gone, I didn’t know where, and over the next three weeks I struggled on how I would get my failed life back together. It was during this time that I began to re-collect my belief system, completely in tact but in some deep far reaches of my memory. I started going back to the church of my youth and then remembered the influential nature of God and that I had never disbelieved, just that I had not believed what I had been taught. I had used Jesus as a wedge between God and myself and that one entity had nothing to do with the other. That is a foreign concept to Christians and in the next several months you will come to realize the significance of it. On a mid Sunday morning in early spring 1994 I fell on my knees for the first time, by myself, for a private conversation with who and what I had studied and formulated in my formative years to be God. It was because, for all that time, it had been juxtaposed to what I was raised with. By myself, I could finally lay myself open to who I believed God was and actually use the spirit He was so willing to make accessible to me, that which had always lived in me. Most of the time God really doesn’t mind if you challenge Him, so I did. “Find my daughter God. Bring her home to me and with your help I’ll do the rest”, I prayed. By the time the words “bring her home” were uttered, the phone began to ring. It was the first time I’d prayed in a while and I wasn’t going to let any of the filth that surrounded me to interrupt. It was going to be God that was relevant now, not they. As the answer machine kicked on and the words “leave a message” ended, I knew God had already started his work. I heard the familiar voice of my child calling out “DAD”, even stronger, “DAAAAD”! I picked up the phone, and discovered there was a very hungry young lady on the other end and “yes, I’d be right there with some food”.

I’ve failed God over the last fourteen years to often to count but we’ve been working together and the circle is almost complete. The one who would be my life’s partner, who left for several years, is now my wife. Our children continue to struggle with the pressures of life. We are raising one set of our grandchildren and we are fulfilled by Gods grace and power though stumbles occur. I have completely assumed full control of my belief system and I have arrived to the point where it is time to interact with you, to help our country get back to fulfilling its purpose at its founding and to correct many of the misconceptions about true belief in God and the superficial one Christians have allowed into their midst. I hope you will join me as I lay out what is the only way to save this country and ourselves. To do anything else would be to destroy what God has created and blessed us with. B.C.