Wednesday, January 11, 2012

That's a Baptist Myth

Monday I picked up my 87 year old aunt at the dentist.  She had taken Special Transit Services there.  She needed to pick up medicine at her pharmacy and then do some grocery shopping.  This was no problem and the reason that I picked her up.

At the pharmacy we had to wait for one prescription to be filled.  At 87 she only takes three medications, two are for the same ailment bone loss.  The other is a very mild drug to reduce her blood pressure.  Her mind is sharp, she still works, and she lives alone.

Our conversation began innocuously.  We talked about what she needed at the store and her plans for the week.   I recently began attending a church that has communion every Sunday.  I told her I liked that.  She agreed having attended a country church with an eclectic membership that also had weekly communion.  Now my aunt attends a Baptist church.  Baptists have the Lord's Supper quarterly.  I have always thought that uncomfortably meager for an ordinance designed to make us one with Christ.  My aunt agreed.

Now you have to know that my whole family, including my aunt, are conservative fundamentalists.  That sounds redundant but trust me it is not.  I am the only one outside the fold of fundamentalism.   My rule at family gatherings is to never discuss religion.  I simply wander away when talk goes to areas I cannot agree with.  My mother was liberal, too.  I often asked her if she was sure she was related to these people.  She would smile and nod.  She was one of ten siblings.  I am an only child, but my extended family is huge, huge and conservative.

I love my aunt and know that I worry her immensely.  I once let slip that I did not believe in hell.  She prayed for me for months, afraid for my salvation.  I do not understand how your salvation can be threatened by the belief in the existence or non-existence of hell, but she sincerely believed it matter.  This slip took place not long after Southern Baptist voted for hell.  A question: Why would you vote for eternal torment?  Anyway, my aunt finally came to the conclusion that I was still saved despite my aberrant belief.  It probably helped that I am the one that looks after her.  I take her to the doctor.  I stay with her in the hospital.  After her knee replacement, I did all her grocery shopping and other chores.

Photo by htlcto
So now we are discussing the Lord's Supper  and she tells me that at the independent church she went to in the country, some of the members wanted to use wine instead of grape juice.  I muttered something about doing it both ways.  "Oh, no." she said.  "Jesus did not drink wine.  It was unfermented so it was just grape juice"  Without thinking I replied, "That's just a Baptist myth."

I knew from my aunt's expression that I was in trouble. I got a lecture on reading the scripture and believing the Bible.  She was absolutely positive that "fruit of the vine" at Passover was grape juice.  In my childhood church (Southern Baptist), I remember whole sermons devoted to this.  I knew better that to do anything more than say I would read up on what Jesus drank at his last meal.  That seemed to mollify her, but I suspect my salvation is once more a worry for her. 

Of course, I learned long ago that Jesus drank wine.  As a teenager, I investigated the unfermented wine hypothesis put forth by my childhood church and found it ridiculous. Jesus first miracle was to change water into wine.   I have always assumed his mother was so adamant that he make water into wine at the wedding at Cana because he and his buddies drank so much.  Jesus shared wine the last night of his life, not grape juice.  That he drank grape juice is a Baptist myth.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

The Golden Idol

By Barry Blitt
We are a self-centered nation.  Our goal is wealth.  Our God has become the golden idol of gratification.. Our corporations, who we are told are people, look only at the bottom line, not the worker at the bottom.

Romney tells us he is for a "self-reliant" nation not an "entitlement" nation.  What does that mean?  Do we expect the disabled and the elderly to be "self-reliant?"  Does the GOP expect to send representatives to nursing homes to tell the residents they must be "self-reliant" and care for themselves?  Do they euthanize those that are not?   Oh, no, nothing that extreme Republicans would say.  But they would return Medicaid to the states without oversight.  States like Texas provide as little care as possible even with federal supervision.  Without federal oversight, nursing homes would become swift tickets to the mortuary.

 Christ told us there are only two commands.  Love God and love your neighbor.  How do you love your neighbor?  Christ answered that in many ways.  All touch my heart, but the ones that sear my soul are these:"For I (Christ) was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.  I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me.  I was in prison and you visited me."   How do we make these words the truth?.   When we do for "one of the least of these brothers of mine."

How can we as Americans let the homeless sleep in the gutter?  How can we deny health care to those who cannot afford it?  We have a for profit prison industry which lobbies for laws that provide more prisoners for their facilities.  The health insurance industry makes money by denying care to the sick.  Republicans wish to repeal the law that went into effect this year that makes insurance companies use 80% of the money they collect in premiums for the health care of those paying the premiums.   Profits above lives. 

Too many flee to gated communities in fear of the other.  I believe Christ wants us to embrace the other.  Those that flee to those protected communities may find that another kind of evil has been locked up with them, a spiritual evil,  an evil that is only satisfied by avarice and separation.  

We need to become a nation that sees every person as too valuable to be lost.  We need to argue for future greatness not for protection of the status quo.  Our goal is should not be wealth. We must dethrone the golden idol of gratification.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Coming of Age

I had a pretty good childhood.  I did have a bone disease that left me wheelchair bound for a few years, but by the time I turned 13 I was walking.  That was when my mother had her first nervous breakdown as they called it in the 60's.  Actually, she had a full psychotic break because she was schizophrenic.  Nice to find out when you are 13 that your mother is really crazy.

I won't go into the details, but after a lengthy hospitalization my mother did come home and go back to work.  Part of her hospitalization time was spent at a private hospital that did nothing to help her but weekly reminded me, a 13 year old, that my mother had neglected herself to take care of me.  When her insurance ran out, Mother was transferred to the state hospital.  "Horrors!" everyone told us.  Yet it was in the state hospital that Mother received the treatment and the medication that let her function normally and subdued her illness.

Mother's siblings had initially helped us, but when my mother was transferred to the State Hospital and her insurance ran out, they offered no assistance. They did seek to have me made a ward of the state and removed from the only home I had known and the care of my paternal grandmother.  My paternal grandmother refused to go along with their scheme.  She held firmly to the belief that my mother would recover.  Luckily for me, Mom did.  My father lived in Michigan with his second wife and wanted nothing to do with his only child.  One aunt told me I could live with her family, clean, cook and care for the children and she would keep me from becoming a ward of the state.  Those were some scary times.

Mom came home and I expected life to return to normal.  It did not.  My grandmother continued to care for the house and cook, her favorite pastime.  Mother went back to work.   Yet, I suddenly was making all my own decisions as well as many for my mother.  My grandmother had gone to work when she was thirteen, she saw no reason to supervise me.  Mother no longer could or would.

I did not recognize the change for a while.  I remember my first dental visit after my mother's hospitalization.  My grandmother gave me a signed blank check and told me when the appointment was.  I rode my bike there, got my teeth checked and cleaned, and wrote the check.  I was a little nervous, but I had been to the dentist before.   What had changed hit home when it came time for me to choose courses for the next semester in junior high.  I brought home the materials but both my grandmother and mother told me to do what I wanted.  I did.  From that day forward, I never asked them about school matters.  My mom would sign my report card happily, but she did not meet with my teachers or discuss my schoolwork.  Years later, she told me she knew I was much harder on myself than she would ever be.

I stopped attending church soon after my mother's hospitalization.  The church had completely abandoned us during mother's illness.  The only ones that helped us at all were members of my grandfather's Masonic lodge who sent a little money and some school clothes for me.  By that time, too,  I had decided I was going to be a scientist. ( I had read too much science fiction.)  I was full of questions, especially questions about our Sunday School lessons.  The teacher usually ignored me, but finally I was told that I should not ask questions because that showed a lack of faith.  I left the church with no plans ever to return.  Mother did not like that I had stopped going to church, but she never returned to church after her illness.  There was too much stigma attached to mental illness for her to feel comfortable in that church.  Again, leaving the Baptist church was totally my decision.   In the sixteen years that followed, I became a deist.  I saw Christianity as incompatible with intellectual pursuits and certainly with science.

My grandmother gradually ceded decision making about the household to me.  We bought a car the summer I turned sixteen, and I learned to drive.  The agreement was that it was my car, but I must put taking my grandmother and mother where they needed to go first.  I drove it to school and anywhere else I wanted to.  Neither my grandmother or mother ever checked on where I went.

You would think that with all this freedom, I would have been a wild teenager,  After all, my teenage years were in the 1960's.  I knew about drugs, smoking and alcohol.  I never smoked.  I did not drink nor do drugs.  I simply was afraid of losing control of my mind.   As I told a friend, I never thought about misbehaving.  I focused on school and taking care of my mother.   Finances helped keep me on the straight and narrow.  Mother was a telephone operator.  We just barely made it month to month.  My grandmother's tiny Social Security check made the difference.   The one thing my mother put her foot down on was my working.  She would not let me do it.  Looking back, I see she was right.  I had my hands full with school and home responsibilities.

I came of age at thirteen in 1960.   I have made my own decisions since then.  I have taken care of both my grandmothers through their last years and final illnesses.  I took care of my mother until her death from complications of Parkinson's disease.  I made it through college and worked all the while.  I possess a Bachelor of Science degree, a doctorate in chemistry and a law degree.   I would make some different choices for myself, but not the one's that pertain to my grandmothers and mother.  I do wish I could have enjoyed being a teenager more.