When Church Meant Snakes

I’m kind of laughing here….today, being Sunday, I see that a large, “church” in Seattle (Mars Hill) is undergoing some “restructuring”. I hate seeing this. I hate it that a church, no matter the denomination, has to be under such scrutiny for wrong doing. God is not a happy camper. I lived in the south as a child (army brat/Louisiana/Texas) and the friends I made had families from the area…Fundamentalist Christian (this is the 50s south mind you), wonderful people, alltrying to live on the Army allotment checks and shopping at the PX and the local Piggly Wiggly grocery stores (long before the term “supermarket” was ever used…lord I’m olde…and notice the “e” at the end of “old”…adds character.) My mom and grandma were old European Catholic, my dad was Pennsylvania Protestant (I think) and although God was a family member in our home, we didn’t attend churches. I remember attending a church function with my mom one Saturday afternoon (the day should have been a tip off and which my grandma thought was just outrageous…not the true Lord’s Day)…but mom had made friends with a lady next door in Fort Hood, and we went along with her and her 4 kids. When we arrived, I could tell mom right away wasn’t thrilled. Where were the saint statues? This “church” was a tent for gosh sakes! Where was the alter and Baptismal font? No pews? Mom enjoyed the rousing gospel music (sort of) but let’s just say that when they brought out the big box full of snakes, mom grabbed my arm so tight it went blue…she pulled me off the seat and headed for the bus stop 5 blocks away…man…my mom could run for a little bitty lady! It took us 3 bus transfers to get home…but when we did, it was like finally reaching heaven. My grandma put her hands to her head and lamented as mom told her the story…there were hugs and kisses and salutations to our “Catholic” God….and grandma thanking every saint imaginable that a snake hadn’t gotten out and bitten us to death! My mom was only 23, just getting used to life in America from the relatively safe confines of Bavaria…this was new…mom wanted to taste it all. Good or bad…mom wanted to experience America, so she could be American. But the notion of snakes put a damper on that. Her idea of the Garden of Eden was more like Adam, Eve, an apple……and a nice little garden worm But you know…to this day, I thoroughly enjoy good gospel music…the kind sung by a wonderful black choir (and that’s another story). But yes…today’s churches still suffer from the same ol’ complaint….money hungry pastors going after those who are kind, God-loving, and saintly. It never ends. And if it did….what would we have to rectify and complain about?

Spare the Rod

I fully believe in spanking children as a form of discipline.  I’ll jump on the mantra bandwagon to say “I was spanked, my kids were spanked…and we all turned out fine”.  And we did.  I firmly believe that half the problem with today’s kids (and parents), is the lack of a good swat on the butt when needed.  The magic word is “swat”.

I got my spankings in the 50s when I was growing up.  The one and only time my mom gave me the belt (I was about 4), she used my dad’s Army belt.  In the swing, the buckle connected and left a nice buckle shaped bruise on my rear end.  I couldn’t count the number of days my mom would check my bottom, rub it and hug me with tears in her eyes.  And as always, I loved her back, this beautiful center of my life. Mom passed 4 years ago, and she never forgot it.  She also never spanked me again.  Total accident.

My grandma on the other hand, she dispensed spankings when, and only if, I needed them…and I needed them a lot.  Living on army bases, I was always running off to the parade fields to ride in the ‘jeephs’.  I was also a little girl who loved dogs at a very early age.  It was no wonder that I watched the dachshund that belonged to a general in the next house.   Each day I would see him run from their long wide porch, run for the fence, dig, then finally waddle his way underneath and gallop off to freedom.  Then came the day I did the same thing, digging an opening big enough for me to get underneath and run after him to the open expanse of the central parade field. I was found by a jeep full of soldiers after an hour and brought triumphantly home.  I didn’t get a spanking that day, but  I did a couple of days later when I was caught in the act of my dig.  Covered in mud and grass and with a tear-streaked face and stinging butt, grandma marched me up to the bath tub, scrubbed until all of me was as red as my rear end was, and sent me off to bed.

The one difference in the spankings I got and from what spankings seem to be today was the fact that I never once felt I wasn’t loved.  I didn’t grow up hating anyone or lamenting the fact I got the back of a hand.  After a spanking I was sent to my room and made to sit there, teary and blithering, until after a few minutes grandma would come in, sit down beside me, and smother me with hugs, telling me why I got spanked and to not do whatever I had done…again.  It’s hard to explain how to spank “with love”, but I think most people who were spanked and grew to adulthood as pillars of the community, might know what I’m talking about.  We were never left with the sense that we hated our parents for them spanking us, nor do we feel any hatred when we spank our own children today.  And this is the problem.  When dealing with their children, spankings today have a small part of hatred in the hand coming down.  Rather then step back, take a deep breath and know that a spanking is the only thing to get the attention of a 5 year old, parents lash out and don’t know when to stop.  A good swat on the bottom or the back of the hand isn’t meant to leave bruises and scars.  It’s meant to get attention. Like a belt or a switch, hands that are meant to love and nurture now become weapons that inflict true pain and feelings of loss.  That kind of discipline doesn’t leave a child knowing that what they had just done wasn’t to be done again.  It leaves instead questions as to why they’re hated, and if they are, maybe the feeling is mutual.

Parents shouldn’t be criticized for spanking their children.  But maybe some parents need to ask themselves how they’re doing it.

Sounds in the Night

There are so many great signs that fall is around the corner…you don’t need a pile of leaves.  Here in east county, I look forward to those sturdy east winds that begin this time of year.  The weather is still on the warm side, but those winds freshen everything up and just make you feel so good (at least it does me).  It holds just a bit of a chill, showing promise of what will come.  The wind gets into branches and speeds up the drying leaves, and we in east county joke that “fall must be coming, the garbage cans are beginning to migrate!” LOL

Everyone already knows about how anxiously I wait to hear the sound of geese in the middle of the night on their annual, full moon flights.  But last night I heard another sound that comes a few weeks before I hear geese….it’s the distant sound of the Amtrak train blowing it’s horn followed by the soft rattle of the rails as the train clacks over them.  The train blows it’s horn as it enters the city of Troutdale, the larger of 2 other little “towns”, Wood Village and Fairview.  The reason this means fall to me is that this time of year, fog starts to settle along the Columbia River.  Gresham is at the top of a large hill, Troutdale is at the bottom, closer to the river (and the Sandy river which runs alongside it also).  This fog forms because of the cooler air mingling with the remainder of warm summer days, and when it does it muffles sounds.  Sounds spread out and find a clear path up the hill toward Gresham where fog hasn’t formed.  Although a good 5 miles from the rail tracks, the sound of the train is heard clearly in the distance.  I’ve always loved hearing the horn and the soft clacking.  It usually happens in the middle of the night, and just like with the geese, I’ll lay there and wonder what is the destination and what wonderful things will be seen.

I wonder about the people and who waits for them at the end of their trip…family?  Someone they love?  A long lost friend?  It’s sad that train travel isn’t what it once was.  But for one brief moment in the middle of a early autumn night, imagination takes you along to places unknown,  and folks not yet met~

A Simple Loaf

Gosh…doesn’t take much to make me happy! I’m so glad that the Kolaches turned out like they did!  I’ve never used a bread machine, nor have I ever made grandma’s Kolaches.  I did both and had success.  I’m sure mom and grandma are happy for me too! There’s something so sustaining and ancient in producing a loaf of bread. Staff of life and all that. I think I might begin to love that bread machine…but the actual kneading of the dough, feeling that smooth, elastic “silly puttyness”, and the rising, and the punching down, well you just can’t get that out of a machine that does it all for you.

I think of all the women who have made bread down the centuries. Need I say I’m on a bread making streak? Fresh bread and soup…is there anything better? Bread machines do have their place…it just depends I guess on how your days run. A hurried life? Bread machine. Take time to think about stuff and go over your day to unwind? Hands. I think about grandma, and all the good stuff she cooked for mom and I.  Suppose women in the 1800’s thought about things other then getting this dough to rise properly? And pioneer women! Having to bake bread on the trail, surrounded by dusty roads and heat?  Ancient Egypt and Rome…the cooks who ran the palaces for the Borgia’s in Italy…Colonials in America when it was just growing…huge fireplaces and cast iron…brick “hives” out back to bake their breads.

It’s an honorable profession, this making bread.  Can’t wait to make more!  Something “peasanty”.  Something “farmish”.  Something that someone would have made a century ago.  Bread.  It connects us.

And Here Comes Lent

So…today being Ash Weds and the first day of Lent, does anyone still give up something these days? As a Catholic school kid, I remember in catechism class always having to tell the nuns what we were giving up for Lent (and it usually was something my family didn’t eat or do anyway..EZ PZ) like Almond Peter Paul Mounds, which my grandmother adored and she was the one eating them. Or Hostess Snowballs (remember those round, coconut covered, cream filled cakes that came in those cool pastel colors?)…which was my poison of choice, but was never allowed to eat. So giving up things for Lent was pretty easy for most of us, forget the fact that we were lying to the sacred women of the cloth (lying, a much better thing to give up for Lent)

But you can use religion to your advantage in a lot of ways. I’m looking at this year’s Lent as an extra step toward my huge weight loss journey. So…for the next 40 days (omg…40 days)…I’m giving up all things bread. No rolls, no fresh French bread straight from the oven…no biscuits or long, salty bread sticks slathered with butter and sea salt. My bread machine will stand idle, weeping a tale of doughy tears…no homemade raisin/cinnamon bread and no crackers with my cheese or in my soup….nothing, nada, verboten. Let’s see how far I get. I still don’t get a swish of ash on my forehead (mostly because in the 3rd grade Dennis Thayer told me, that his brother told him, who heard it from his girlfriend’s cousin, Milt)…that the ashes used by the priests were what was left after cremations.  ‘Nuf said!

Hope everyone has given up a little something..and if you can’t bring yourself to do that, add something for the next 40 days, like donating to the local food pantry, helping out at a senior facility…you know, warm and fuzzy feeling stuff.

Did I mention I’m adding more wine?

Foggy Mornings

Is there anything prettier than sun breaking thru a foggy morning? It’s almost 10am, and thick fog pretty much enveloped everything. Like snow, a good fog silences the loud cacophony of Saturday morning commuters. Everything still seems wrapped in sleep, too chilly and too gloomy to wake. Then, about 30 minutes ago, the first shaft of sunlight, one thin strand, made it’s way thru the grayness. Dew left on the grass and the fallen leaves sparkle and glimmer like diamonds thrown across the lawnTree branches now come to life, shivering with a slight breeze and the morning is telling everyone to wake up and seize the day…the rains will soon come back again. Little by little the fog is lifting. What’s left of autumn leaves seem brighter right now. On one of the jobs I used to have, I had a commute that allowed me to choose a route thru the countryside near my home. It was a little longer, but I loved seeing pastures and homes that dotted the hillside. One “ranch” had several acres. Just about the time I’d make it to the area, the sun would break thru the morning fog and I SO loved watching the horses stop grazing, sniff the air, and suddenly spring to life, cantering and snorting their horsey warm breath, kicking up their legs and just being, well, happy! The fog is at the tops of the trees now, the sun glaring thru the last of it. I love autumn mornings like this…makes me want to kick up my legs and canter across a field too! LOL

Save Me…NOT

I’m very offended when some of these idiot, holier-than-thou bible thumpers come to my door and say they’re going to save me.  What makes them think I need saving?? So now, (and I’m now considered a “senior citizen”…uckkkk), I stick up for myself.  Here’s what I tell them…

“I don’t like you assuming I need to be saved.  I don’t like you assuming I don’t know my God, pray, or follow the commandments.  I don’t like you assuming that I’ve had a troubled life, have done ill-will to others, have cheated on my spouse or the IRS or anyone else, or have lied to anyone other than to make someone feel better about a bad situation.  What I’M ASSUMING is that you don’t know that I’ve never even had a traffic ticket in all the years I’ve driven, or have a clue as to who I am or what I’m all about, because you know squat about me.  The only one who needs to worry about saving me is God….and so far I think He’s done a great job.  I’m proud of myself.  Nothing in life is perfect, even me.  But I’m close.  Go save yourselves.  Some of us don’t need you 🙂 ”

So there :)….and I’m going to be sure and meet them at the door holding a martini…2 olives thank you!