The following are emails I received from Annette on 8/29/14 just 6 weeks before she died, with ‘Recent Remembrances and Reflections’ as the title text, saying, “Sorry, they just keep coming right now!” I felt like she was urgently receiving downloads from above. Little did I know why at the time, but I knew she was hearing from God.

Corn Fields, Fried Chicken & Innocence Lost

“Well I was just 17, you know what I mean?” And the way I looked, well, beyond comparisons let’s just say I was trying very hard to look like a young hippie chick. Bell bottom jeans, long brown hair parted in the middle, and no bra if I could get away with it without my Mom stopping me from leaving the house.

I had already become a big rock music fan, and saved my babysitting money to acquire as many albums as possible to broaden my musical pedigree. I had graduated from the early Beatles and Monkees on to Chuck Berry, Led Zeppelin, Rod Stewart, The Who and The Stones. I had running battles with my mother, who although a Catholic, had developed her own somewhat Pentecostal convictions that this was devil music. That they were ALL ON DRUGS. That the music and musicians were OUT THERE and out to subvert our generation of young people into rebels, rabble-rousers, and renegades. This was ABOUT SEX, at which point she would hold up the Rolling Stones ’Sticky Fingers’ album cover with the zippered fly on the jeans as Exhibit A in her case against THIS NONSENSE.

I had been a straight-A student all throughout elementary and high school, compliant and shy, bookish with glasses and painfully thin. But now, with my new contact lenses and long hair, a flattering pair of jeans and bra-less budding breasts, I was beginning to look at life and possibilities a little differently.

That summer before my senior year, my younger sister and I were restless and bored – to quote a Bob Seger song. We both had summer jobs, but longed for fun and excitement. What was there to do in our community of farmers and blue-collar workers in Northern Ohio? We were smack-dab in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by corn-fields, with an occasional soybean crop thrown in for variety and excitement. In a few years I would discover that living in the middle of the Akron-Cleveland to Toledo and then onto Detroit corridor, which was a major route for every great rock band touring in the 70’s, allowed me to easily attend almost every concert that came through during my college years. But having just turned 17, I was still uninitiated to great live music. My arguments with my Mom went something like… “But Mom, it’s just music! It’s not evil! It’s about the beat, and life and the JOY of living! It’s POSITIVE! They couldn’t possibly be doing DRUGS and playing the music this well!” I would put on my records in our basement, turn on the lava lamp and a black-light over my Janis poster, and dance all by myself for hours. For me it WAS about the beat and life and the JOY of living and dancing. Nothing dark or subversive here. Sex? What was that? This was about freedom and peace and love!

Back to that summer, in our frustration my sister and I called a local radio station to whine and ask “What was there to DO in Fremont Ohio?!!!” And they informed us that the very next Sunday evening, a series of weekly summer TEEN DANCES would begin taking place, with actual rock bands from out-of-town! From Detroit! From Motor City! WOW!!!!! We couldn’t wait! We ironed our hair, embroidered our jeans, and crocheted vests that would disguise our braless state long enough to pass parental scrutiny and exit from the house.

Now you might wonder what kind of venue would be available for teen dances in little old Fremont, Ohio. An armory? Nope. A school gymnasium? Nope. No, these historic events would be staged live at none other than “OLE ZIM’s WAGON SHED”. This fine establishment was owned and operated by ‘Ole’ Zim himself. Mr. Zimmerman was a nice farmer who owned hundreds of acres and had constructed a large barn-like structure on his property, right in the middle of miles of corn fields, yet just a short hop from the Ohio Turnpike. He put on a nightly fried chicken buffet that was renowned throughout the surrounding counties. Farmers and families came from far and wide to eat to their heart’s content and then enjoy local bands playing either square dancing or polka music. The stage was not high-tech, but the roomy venue served its purpose well as a food emporium/dance palace/wedding reception hall, and provided the locals with many fine evenings of celebratory relief from crop cultivating and hay baling. Somehow in early 1970, an enterprising young hipster had approached ‘Ole Zim’ with an offer he apparently couldn’t refuse; an opportunity to improve his cash flow and put that real estate to good use on Sunday nights after all the farmers were home in bed or watching Ed Sullivan.

TEEN DANCES. It sounded so good, so right, and so wholesome. A logical extension of fried chicken and square dances for the old folks would be to give the young folks something fun to do, right? Teen dances at Ole Zim’s Wagon Shed were given the big green light by our parents.

That following Sunday night, I was the designated (and only licensed) driver for a carload of giggling, excited teenage girls. We traveled all of four miles through the corn fields to ‘Ole Zim’s Wagon Shed”. We paid the modest cover charge of $1 and made our way in. The round-top tables for sitting and eating your chicken buffet dinner were stacked along the side walls, the lights were lowered and several hundred young people crowded up to sit cross-legged like little Indians on the bare floor near the stage. Nobody looked especially interested in dancing, but excitement was in the air. Who was playing? It was some big out-of-town band from Detroit, that much we knew. Would it be Ted Nugent or Bob Seger, both of whom had early hits on Detroit radio stations with “Journey to the Center of Your Mind” and “Ramblin Gamblin Man”?

‘Ole Zim’ got up to welcome us, and then the young promoter who had hoodwinked ‘Ole Zim’ into all of “this nonsense” proceeded to grandly introduce…… IGGY POP and THE STOOGES!!!!!!! What? Who?

The wall of sound that poured forth into the awful barn-like acoustics was indecipherable, and you could barely hear the drums, much less discern if anything had a ‘good beat you could dance to.’ The band looked and acted completely strung out on drugs, and Iggy… well Iggy made Mick Jagger look downright wholesome. ‘Stringy’ was my first impression. He looked like he was made of tough, twisted ropes. Wearing no shirt, sporting a lean and hard torso with low slung pants, stringy hair and well, I seem to remember he wore some kind of loincloth, which I could not bring myself to look at directly. He did not stay on the stage, but rather jumped into the crowd and proceeded to prowl around and stalk all of us dazed and slightly frightened teenagers who were watching with our mouths open. I don’t remember the music much, just bits of some song about ‘wanting to be your dog’. I didn’t find Iggy attractive, yet I was slightly intrigued by his total disregard for ‘winning over’ or ‘connecting’ with his audience. In fact he had a rather aggressive attitude toward the crowd. He appearing to be taunting us, as if he were trying to pick a fight. There was definitely something sexual about it, but in a rather mean and disturbing way. Oh dear God, I realized with a sick feeling, my MOM HAD BEEN RIGHT all along!

These guys WERE on drugs! The manager of The Stooges WAS involved in the White Panther movement in Ann Arbor and was VERY subversive. SEX was definitely on their mind. The loincloth spoke for itself. My poor little virgin eyes and ears and heart were scarred for life. I had the sinking realization that this music that expanded my thinking and opened up my horizons to worlds beyond our small farming community, this magical vehicle of peace and love also contained a very dark side.

In later years, Iggy and the Stooges became legendary icons of early Punk music, the forerunners of the Ramones, and I heard they actually invented stage diving. Ole’s Zim’s stage wasn’t high enough to dive from, so we didn’t witness that. (It was designed to be just tall enough to see the accordion player do his Beer Barrel Polka solo on Saturday nights).

Iggy was actually Jim Osterberg from Ann Arbor, Michigan, the son of a high school English teacher and baseball coach and had reportedly been valedictorian of his high school class. He somehow survived all of the drugs and years of mayhem to manage his business affairs astutely, later getting into acting, and recently I heard one of his songs as the TV commercial theme music for a cruise line – “Here comes Johnny now…. I gotta lust for life….lust for life” – which played as families cavorted on the cruise ship’s wave pool. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, looking much the same as he did in 1970, just a bit more weathered and “ropey”.

Detroit was a fine incubator for some great rock music, from the MC5, to Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes, The Bob Seger System, Alice Cooper, Grand Funk Railroad, and later spawning Emimem and Jack White. It was a tough town that fell upon tougher times when the auto industry waned, and it has never recovered. But Detroit gave me CKLW radio, all of the great Motown classics and my first live rock concert experience with Iggy Pop. I was never the same.

I moved into late adolescence with the growing awareness that all of these people, these musicians and the vast armies of fans who loved them and the music they created, all contained within them elements both of the divine as well as the degraded. It was a jumbled admixture, and you never could tell which strain would be predominant or prevail at any given moment. You had to be careful not to worship them or put any of them on pedestals, for you would surely be disappointed in the end. You had glimpses of peace and love and community at Woodstock, closely followed by the chaos and violence and the killing of a fan by the Hells Angels security force at the Altamont music festival. The joy of listening to “Purple Haze”, “Me and Bobby McGee” and “Light My Fire” was tempered by the sad deaths of Jimi, Janis and Jim Morrison.

Fast forward some 20 years later and I moved to Nashville and became exposed to and involved in the contemporary Christian music scene. I originally believed that these folks would be different, that their focus on God and Jesus would purify the elements involved in creating great music. After all, if it was uplifting and sanctified and meant to glorify God, wouldn’t that mean that the creators and purveyors of this would be different? Better somehow? True conduits of the peace and love and freedom that compelled me to dance alone in my basement at age 17?

Sadly, my second loss of innocence involved the dawning revelation, through personal experiences, that these folks were simply battling a different, more subtle set of demons. Instead of battling drug or alcohol addiction (although some Christian musicians secretly were), or living a life of wanton debauchery (although some secretly were), instead they were prone to serving their own egos, their desire for the stage, their compulsion to be admired, their need for acclaim, the drive to manipulate others to serve their talents and gifts, to convert it all into a money-making enterprise, and to accumulate wealth just as surely as their secular counterparts. Petty jealousies over who got more stage time, who had more control — all were just as prevalent within church ministries and Christian music as the in-fighting that led to the breakup of the Beatles. It was just wrapped up in a cloak of “godliness” and “serving Jesus”.

After my initial disillusionment and disgust, which took a good 10 years to overcome, I have come to see all of them, the sacred and the secular, the “lost” and the “saved”, the believers as well as the seekers as well as the rebels, all of them including myself,as God’s broken children. The brokenness in each of us just presents itself differently to the outside world. Some wear it loudly and proudly, like Iggy, while others hide their brokenness behind glossy facades. Some, like Robin Williams can acknowledge their failings and weaknesses while others are in complete denial, both within and without “the Church.” I no longer see people divided into camps of those who have it all right and are special and saved, versus masses of the lost and condemned. Instead I see Jesus hanging on the cross, looking out through blood and tears, surveying a mass of broken children stretching as far back in time as Adam and as far into the future as we can imagine, and saying “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.”

Ashes to Ashes , Up in Smoke

By the mid-1970’s when I attended Kent State University, the shootings by the National Guard were just a hand-me-down memory, with most of those students by now long gone. While candlelight vigils were still held each May 4, with Nixon out of office and the war in Vietnam winding down, the radical enthusiasm for protest had dissipated and most of the current students were more interested in parties and getting a good “buzz” concurrent with getting a good education

Downtown Kent, specifically the Water Street area along the Cuyahoga River, was the place to go for drinking, music and general fun in the town. The university’s students seemed to be somewhat bifurcated into two camps. The good kids who attended for all of the right reasons, liked college sports and who mainly drank hard. Then there were the second-generation hippies, the music lovers and pot-smoking college kids who were just a bit too young to have been in on the “Woodstock” phenomena, but who wanted to experience what they’re heard about from their older brothers and sisters.

While all of the bars along Water Street were consistently filled with swarming packs of college students every weekend, one particular bar, the Kove, was far and above considered the hottest, hippest spot in town for that second set of folks. Many soon-to-be famous acts, such as Joe Walsh and the James Gang, Devo and The Rasberries, got their start at The Kove.

You entered The Kove at street level from Water Street, and then descended down a wide metal staircase into the dungeon-like surrounds where the legendary house band, 15-60-75 had held court since July of 1970, just two months after the shootings at Kent State. Comprised of and led by the two amazing Kidney brothers, Bob and Jack, as well as The Pretenders’ Chrissy Hynde’s brother Terry on sax, they put forth some of the most smokin’ hot blues-based rock I’ve ever heard. Ever.

When not wailing on his blues harp, Jack nursed out sounds from a Hammond B3 organ with a giant Leslie speaker, which combined with horns and blazing hot guitar licks to create a hypnotic blend of blues, jazz, and rock, blended together into their own special mix of originals and barely recognizable covers. The band drew not only locals but commuters from as far as Cleveland, Akron and Youngstown. They played 4 nights a week to a regular audience of between 500-900 hippies, poets, bikers, artists, townies, musicians, college professors & students. Most of the patrons and fans had typically ingested enough of some substance or other to substantially cloud their memories, and so no one could ever exactly recall the number sequence of the band name. Therefore, the act became known throughout the land as “The Numbers Band.” People danced —-all kinds of people danced, or twirled, or threw themselves into the air, with whirling skirts, fringed jackets, flying hair, bare feet and all very, very high. It was a carnival of cultures. On those nights within the dimly lit, hot, smoky walls of the Kove, something was happening.

Making one’s way as a young woman through wall-to-wall people towards the gravitational pull of the music, you could expect 1). to be offered a toke from a joint 2). for someone to subtly “cop a feel’ and 3). to not be particularly offended by either gesture, for it was all part of the scene. The fine officers of the City of Kent’s municipal police force had long ago decided to focus their efforts on street crime, burglaries and traffic violations, which provided plenty of fodder for them to meet their arrest quotas. In-house recreational drug use on Water Street was the least of their concerns. Public consumption of just about any substance within the confines of The Kove was a non-event for either club management or external law enforcement, as long as folks were somewhat discreet.

One winter’s evening, a group of my friends and acquaintances had met at The Kove, and intending for the evening to be a bit more “socially interactive” we decided to grab a table around a corner, rather than crowd into the room where The Numbers Band was stirring their stew of pulsing, hypnotic-gas-effect music. A half dozen of us gathered around a small table, ordered drinks, and began to have a bit of shouted conversation over the music. At one point, one of the group who was a relative newcomer, perhaps wishing to credentialize himself and gain favor with the crowd, pulled out of his jacket a golf-ball sized, tin-foil wrapped sphere. He proudly displayed it for a moment, as if it were one of the Crown Jewels of England, and then, while all eyes were upon him, carefully peeled back the layer of tin-foil. Inside, glistening with dew and resin, nestled the largest ball of hash any of us had ever seen! This thing was a monster by recreational drug standards. It had to be worth at least $500, which at the time could have paid somebody’s rent for 6 months or covered a semester’s tuition! This was a precious thing.

A brief tutorial on hash, for those unacquainted, and since marijuana is being legalized in more and more states each year, we might as well learn a little about it. Both pot (or marijuana) and hash come from the female plant known as cannabis. THC, which is the chemical that creates the physical and emotional sensations when a person smokes or ingests cannabis, is found in the tiny hairs of the tips of the flowers or buds on the plant. This is where the resin, or the THC, is naturally stored. When the flowering tips are dried out, the smokable form of marijuana is created. Hashish, however, is more like a compressed and highly concentrated version of the same resin found in the flower tip hairs and the manufacturing process is far more elaborate. For this reason, hash is often significantly more potent than straight weed or pot, and also much more expensive. It must be smoked in some sort of pipe. The ancient Arabs, Chinese, Asians, Persians and Indians (from India) all produced and consumed hashish ceremonially, medicinally and for pleasure.

So our new friend then proceeded to pull out his brass hash pipe. carve off a tiny chunk (it didn’t take much), light up and pass the peace pipe around. I’m not saying that I actually inhaled, but the stuff appeared to be potent. After a few passed rounds, the group began to form a kind of collective consciousness, sort of like an ant colony, whereby non-verbal communication became easy and intuitive. Any random event, such as a person stumbling as they walked by, could simultaneously result in instant eye-contact amongst the group, an immediate recognition of the humor of the occurrence, followed by collective, contagious shoulder-heaving laughter, without a word being spoken. Large groups of similarly enhanced folks, such as a crowd of 20,000 at a rock concert, would all experience simultaneous moments of awe and rapture when a particularly transcendent musical passage occurred. That night, it seemed as though hours passed (probably 20 minutes or so) in this pleasant hazy bubble of our private little wonder-world. At some point, we were dimly aware of a staff person checking to see if we needed drink refills.

None of us were aware of any need for additional beverages and we returned to our collective reverie. After what seemed like a few more hours (probably 15 minutes or so) we began to come back to earth, back to The Numbers Band and our table. At some point, someone noticed that the staff person had diligently and efficiently cleared the trash off the table. The crumpled napkins, empty drink cups, dirty ashtrays etc. were all gone like magic. Nice service. But wait! The glistening gleaming monster hash ball was also gone! It had been lying there in its tin foil nest, and now it was nowhere to be seen! As one, everyone made eye contact. Eyebrows raised. Are you kidding? No words were exchanged but the communal ant-like radar communication went something like this… “It’s gone!” “They took it!” “They thought it was trash!” (“Or not!”) “What can we do?” “But, it’s still illegal!””How can we report this?” “That might get us busted!” “We better not accuse them of stealing it!” “Should we go look in the trash?” After several rounds of collective unspoken alarm and confusion, peering around and under the table, someone began to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, and soon the entire table was rocking with laughter and giggles. Except the proprietor of the hash-ball. Who simply appeared stunned. Talk about a buzz-kill.

Some months later, while attending an evening art-class on campus at around 8:30 in the evening, a scruffy hippie came skidding into our classroom a la’ Kramer sliding into Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment… “The Kove is ON FIRE!!!!”

The students and professor abandoned their work and we all hurried to the site downtown. Police had barricades and tape up, keeping the growing crowd at a safe distance. The blazing inferno was growing into a half-block long and 4 story-high firestorm. Up in flames went the bar, the musical memories, the uninsured Hammond organ and Leslie speaker, and the ghosts of hippies past. Up in smoke went the era of The Kove. The roaring flames and swirling sparks drew a substantial audience which stood silent, mesmerized and thoughtful.

A somber mood prevailed as we all contemplated the end of something that had been important to each of us for different reasons. Also unspoken, but a dark shadow on the backside of our minds, was the realization of how fortunate the timing had been. If the blaze had broken out just a few hours later, all of us could have been trapped in that underground cellar, packed in like sardines as we perished.
The numbers band continues to perform at different venues around Kent to this day. Their big break almost came one subsequent year in the late 70’s when they were invited to play at Traxx, a hip club in New York City that was a notorious hangout for entertainment and television types, situated not far from the Saturday Night Live theater. The story goes that they brought the house down and got rave review in the local press as the “Fabulous ‘Blues Brothers’ from Ohio”. As always, Jack Kidney brought his harmonicas to the stage in a briefcase. The Numbers Band didn’t get a record deal, but several months late Belushi and Ackroyd’s “Blues Brothers” made their debut on Saurday Night Live, with “Jake” unpacking his harp from a suitcase onstage. Coincidence? Plagiarism? We’ll never know.

Cuss-words, Hamburgers and Homecomings

When my son was around 11, he and his best friend were playing organized soccer. The friend’s mother was a lovely woman, a bit older, very dignified and a respected neonatologist in private practice. She had been very gracious and generous to me as a single-mom, allowing my son to stay overnight with them whenever I had work obligations. After a Saturday soccer game, she and I took our boys for hamburgers at McDonald’s. The boys received their food orders first, and took their trays to a booth about 50 feet away. The joint was hopping on a Saturday, with many families and small children in close proximity.

As the mother and I received our trays of food and began walking across the restaurant, we immediately saw and heard our boys performing a loud puppet show with their hamburgers.

Picture Bert and Ernie from the Muppets as talking hamburgers. Each hamburger was loudly exclaiming in a kind of call and response, “MASTURBATION!” … lower voice… “Masturbation!!!” “MASTURBATION!” … “Masturbation!!.” The boys would then convulse in laughter while the surrounding tables had all grown completely silent, with parents glaring in our direction.

I thought the Dr./Mother was going to faint. We hurried to the booth and began “shushing” the boys.

“Stop that!!!” “What???” “What’s wrong?” “Be quiet!!!” “Why???” “What’s the matter?”

Me – “TELL THAT HAMBURGER TO SHUT UP!!”

Son- “Mom, what is wrong??? Me – “Just stop it and I’ll explain later.”

We finished our meals, and as my son and I began the drive home, he demanded that I tell him what was wrong. I first asked why they were doing and saying what they were saying. His response was that the older boys would say it in the locker room and laugh and so they just thought it was a funny word, and decided to make it a comedy routine. Which I guess it is a funny sounding word.

Then my son asks me directly “Mom, WHAT does masturbation mean?”

So… gripping the steering wheel tightly and staring straight ahead at the road… I searched for words. Blank mind. Sweaty palms. Where to begin? No training for this. Not a chapter in any of Dr. Dobson’s parenting books.

“Well…. do you ever wake up in the morning, with your… penis….kind of”—- He cuts me off quickly and says “Yes, Mom. Guys call that a ‘woody’ or a ‘stiffie’.

“OK. Well…. sometimes when guys have a ‘woody or a stiffie’ … they sometimes do things with it…?” (I’m thinking, help me here!) He cuts me off again and says “Mom, the guys call that ‘jacking off’.

Whew! We were there! “OK, so what you just said – the actual term for that is ‘masturbation.’

Dead silence. Crickets. Long pause.

Son, ” Mom, we didn’t know…. crap I’m glad you told me.”

Later that year, I began to think that maybe he needed to be around men more, so that when those kinds of topics and questions came up, there would be a more appropriate person to address the specifics. So I enrolled my son in Boy Scouts (I think we had skipped the Cub Scout era during my move from Houston to Nashville). This was definitely a guilt-trip issue, with me feeling like I needed to be more like the other families, as well as provide my boy with male father figures and exposure to more manly pursuits, versus my love of books and music.

So I diligently assembled all of the right gear for him, dressed him in the costume- I mean uniform- with the knives and trappings and drove my somewhat reluctant woodsman to the events. That summer, the Scoutmasters informed me that he should be part of the great state-wide Jamboree at Camp Boxwell, when armies of Boy Scout troops from Memphis to Chattanooga and parts in between, all assembled at the centrally located camp in the deep woods of Tennessee. There would be a solid week of manly outdoor activities, including hiking and fishing and swimming and crafts and all of the things that I feared my skinny little bespectacled boy was missing out on.

He resisted. He did NOT want to go to Camp Boxwell. The Scoutmaster had to come into our house that morning and physically escort him out to their SUV. He cried. I cried, but felt that this was tough-love and that he would thank me in the end. I did agree to pick him up a day early to get him back to his Dad’s for the rest of the summer.

A week later, as I made my way through the backwoods on pick-up day, down miles of gravel lanes and onto the property, I saw a skinny, wet, and muddy apparition appear from the brush long before I arrived at the lodge. This semi-human, bedraggled gazelle-like creature began to run alongside my vehicle, escorting me to base camp. It was my boy. And he could not WAIT to leave. We loaded up his wet, filthy gear (it had apparently rained and stormed for much of the week) and drove the several-hour trek back home in mostly silence, punctuated by an occasional sniffle. When asked how it went, he simply answered “Terrible.” He mumbled something about spiders, ticks, and rain.

As we arrived back in Nashville, he asked if we could please stop at McDonald’s on the way to our house. Sure! We came in the house, and he sat at the kitchen table with his hamburger, fries and coke all spread before him like a feast. After wolfing down a few bites, he propped his elbows on the table, leaned his head into his hands, and began to shake with muffled, heaving sobs. It was like watching a drunk bellied up to a bar with his whiskey, as he confided his deepest troubles to the trusted bartender.

My heart melted with concern as I asked “Sammy what’s wrong?”

More heaving sobs.

“Nothing’s wrong Mom. It’s just – (sob) — I’M SO DAMN GLAD TO BE HOME!!!!”

The Boy Scout gear was quietly donated to another, more suitable family. I never addressed the cuss-word. I bought my son a computer, and he proceeded to become a prodigious little hacker at an early age, which was excellent training and a worthy apprenticeship for his current work as an IT specialist and computer software consultant. He’s a tall handsome young man, still thin, but it takes a skinny guy to look really good in skinny jeans. He has always been an old soul, incredibly bright and insightful, artistic and musical with a tender heart for animals and his girlfriend. Thankfully, I realized that trying to make him fit into a mold of what I thought other people thought he should be, was just a bad idea.

I’ve also come to realize that trying to fit my OWN self into a mold of what I thought other people thought I should be, was a bad idea as well.

The story of the prodigal son has been told and interpreted many ways. But my Pastor Stan puts a spin on it that opened my eyes. After the one son takes his inheritance and goes off into the far country and squanders everything in wild and crazy living, he ends up working in a hog-pen just to survive. He realizes that he could be a servant at his Dad’s place and live better than he’s living now. Many re-tellings of the story skip over a little transitional phrase that summarizes the son’s epiphany or his pivotal point, but once I saw it, it screamed out to me as being extremely significant.

Virtually every translation then says… “But when he came to himself….” The Bible doesn’t say, “But when he realizes what a worthless, wretched fool he’d been” or “But when he saw how disgusting and filthy his lifestyle had become…” It says “BUT WHEN HE CAME TO HIMSELF”. As if his true self, the core of who he was, was OK. Was good and acceptable, even! He didn’t need to become different, he just needed to get back to himself. Now maybe he had been confused, and had never known who he really was, which was the impetus for his searching journey into the far country in the first place. But his Dad knew. And his Dad welcomes him back with no recriminations and affirms his pre-existing identity as a BELOVED SON. No jumping through hoops was required.

The Beatles sang “Get back to where you once belonged” and I have realized that life is too short to force myself into places or adapt an identity imposed by outside expectations. It’s far more important to ask the question, “Who does my DAD say that I am?”

And to listen inside for HIS answer. Not other people’s answers. Not some book’s answers. Not some church’s or denomination’s answer. Only HE can answer that question for ME! And he didn’t create an army of clones. He created Iggy Pops and Mother Teresa’s and Boy Scouts and artists and sorority girls and computer geeks.

And many times what everybody else agrees is the good and right way to be, leaves YOU shivering cold, wet, muddy, miserable, and covered with ticks.

I’m just SO DAMN GLAD TO BE HOME!

Strange Blessings

As a cradle Catholic, I grew up learning the Catechism from nuns and my grandmother, which included memorizing at an early age, the “Hail Mary” and the “Our Father,” which were the primary all-purpose prayers. Once you knew these two prayers, you could make your way through the entire Rosary. Once you made your First Confession, these prayers are what would be assigned for you to pray as “penance” after you’d revealed all of your sins and transgressions. As in… since you had just confessed to stealing a second bowl of ice cream when Mom wasn’t looking, while hiding the uneaten green beans around the edge of your dinner plate, you might be assigned to pray four (4) Hail Mary’s and one (1) Our Father. You knew from the volume of prayers assigned as penance as to whether the priest had concluded you were particularly wicked and rebellious, or if he was inclined to see you as just a bit unruly this week, in which case you might only be assigned only one or two Hail Mary’s.

If you were disciplined enough to pray through an entire rosary, you would have recited the “Hail Mary” over 50 consecutive times. The first part of the prayer begins “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” According to the Book of Luke, that part is taken from the angel Gabriel’s greeting to Mary when he first announced to her that she was going to become pregnant and that the child would be from God. Luke also records that after this announcement, Mary traveled to visit her sister-in-law Elizabeth, who greeted her with the words “Blessed are thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb” which was the next line in the Hail Mary prayer. “Blessed are thou amongst women…”

In the south, the terms “Bless” and “Blessed” and “Blessing” are thrown around in the vernacular a lot. “Bless Your Heart” can be endearing and kind-sounding, but can also be a sly, somewhat condescending dig at the person. Southerners believe in being polite even if it kills them. So, when they just can’t fight the urge to say something nasty, they follow it up with a “Bless Her Heart” just to make themselves feel better, such as “Look at that poor woman trying to jog around that track. Her rear-end is dragging a trail, Bless Her Heart.”

I work with a financial advisor from Texas who signs off on every conversation or e-mail with a cheerful “Be Blessed!” I always feel better after talking with him.

And most of us in general will “count our blessings” when we and our families are generally in good health or we are financially prosperous or a prayer has been just been answered.

When my son was around 12 years old, he was attending a private Christian school where the children of many folks in the Nashville entertainment industry attended, some who were financially successful and others not-so-much. These were good families intent on providing the best educational environment for their children and they pulled together to create a loving and nurturing school setting. To help each other out, some shared carpooling duties. As a single-mom working full-time, these carpool opportunities were immensely helpful.

One afternoon, as that day’s carpool mother of three sons pulled into my driveway to drop off my son, she looked out at me with terror in her eyes, ashen-faced. She confided that their middle son had been complaining of a tummy ache, and that they finally took him in for tests that day. He had been diagnosed with a vicious form of cancer, with a large tumor in his abdomen.

I was speechless. Mute. With a sick feeling in my stomach, I could barely mutter a word of encouragement. Fortunately, the rest of the school and parents soon rallied around the family, and began to hold prayer meetings, establish prayer chains, and schedule special church services.

In my heart of hearts, I felt from the beginning that this was going to be a fatal illness. I didn’t want to look the parents in the eyes, afraid that they would see my “lack of faith” and that it would somehow nullify all of the positivity and strong claims of confidence in the power of prayer being put forth by the rest of the community. I could see the long, sorrowful road ahead and was just heartsick for them.

The boy had surgery to remove the large tumor, which basically involved amputating almost half of his body, including one leg and hip. He rallied and came back to school on crutches and inspired everyone with his courage. He then relapsed and had to endure brutal rounds of chemo and radiation. You could say that by that time, the Doctors were throwing the equivalent of a “Hail Mary Pass” as a last, desperate attempt in the face of daunting odds to win the game. Our community held even-more-intense prayer sessions and folks claimed to receive prophetic words and visions that the boy would be miraculously healed.

I shamefully hid my “lack of faith” and then, not quite 2 years after the diagnosis, the boy succumbed to the vicious invader, and suffered a painful and torturous death.

I later rendered a pencil drawing of the boy, enfolded in the arms of Jesus, and presented it to them as a gift, which was later published in a book authored by the father chronicling the entire experience. When I gave the drawing to them, I included my reflections that they were sadly but truthfully the “blessed” ones. Jesus in his Beatitudes had proclaimed that those” who mourn” and those who are “poor in spirit” were “blessed”. When Mary was pronounced to be “blessed amongst women”, that blessing encompassed a future that would involve not only the confused joy of raising her boy, but ultimately watching helplessly as he was later betrayed, rejected and tortured to death.

A bitter-sweet journey. An upside-down kingdom.

Many questions left unanswered this side of heaven.

Strange blessings