When I was a young girl, growing up in the Presbyterian church, I learned many traditional hymns. It was the sixties and seventies era, so contemporary Christian music was starting to become more popular, as well. Young people, disillusioned with war, concerned for the earth, and searching for answers, became what our family called "The Jesus People".
Our farm was about a mile from the county park, where there was a mud bottom lake you could fish or swim in, a small playground and a picnic pavilion.
In the summer, the Jesus People would come to the park and set up their guitar amps and microphones. When we heard them start playing this hippy, Christian music, my parents packed us kids into the station wagon and drove a mile up the road to check out these modern day apostles, singng "Put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee..."
I learned that song by heart and love it to this day!
At home, we had a piano in the living room and two hymnals were always on it. Other music might be on top or in the piano bench. The hymnals, however, were displayed right on the front and Mom would sometimes play while Dad and we children sang hymns. We learned to stay on melody to Mom and Dad's harmony. This, too, is music I can still sing and enjoy.
Beyond the music was the message. The one I learned in our Christian home and in Sunday School was that God loves us, Jesus died for us and feels mercy toward us, and if I believed that, then I'd go to heaven someday. Pretty simple ideas, yet later in life, harder to reconcile.
Fast forward, and my faith today is a shell of what it once was. That has not been an easy thing to reconcile, that I could lose faith in the God they taught me about, the one they promised would help.
But, in the end, to believe that "shit happens" and it is often for no apparent reason, is becoming liberating.
I have a fairly mild concern for what my destiny in the afterlife will be, or if that even exists.
The events I see unfolding now around the world are chaotic and harmful to others, in many cases. We hear of that "light in the darkness", the story that "restores our faith in humanity". We enjoy the relief that brings from the stress we feel. But, personally, I can't stay there.The chaos still reigns.
So, I appreciate the lighter, more loving things I find, the wonderful people I meet, and the family and friends who enrich my life.
However, unless I go off grid in a Ted Kaczynski manner, a complete recluse that has sworn off this world, then I still have choices to make. I still have things to learn and do, and those things are not always peaceful or comfortable on the inside.
As I watch the genocide being committed in Gaza, I think of the sort of Christianity I was taught to be, growing up. Matthew 25 says to do unto the "least of these", is to do it unto Jesus himself.
I think of seeing the Vietnam war protests
as a young girl, and I think of the slaughter at Kent State, a symbol of the State against the people. I remember the "race riots" from that chaotic time, as well. I am seeing division now like nothing that we've seen since "Occupy" and Vietnam. But now, that can get you detained and even deported, as an "anti-Semite".
Today, as I try to hear what those Jesus People were saying and singing that made me grow to love them, I am perplexed. My confusion is not in what my patched together faith is telling me about right and wrong. No, that is crystal clear in my mind.
My consternation is with the old hippies who forgot after Vietnam, how to be hippies! The Jesus People need to truly be those people now!
It would seem that for a few, walking to the garden in a grass skirt and milking a goat is Zen enough to be satisfiying, as they shake their heads at the rest of us who are squaring off.
In the end, I think about the Tracy Chapman song "Across the Line" and I think to myself that those Jesus People of old could be as inspirational today as they were back then.
A few of those hippies have stayed or come back out.
But, it's not nearly enough of them (of US!)...
They are dying off now. A new generation of college protesters are being arrested and shot at today. They dare to oppose genocide in their name, paid for with their money, as they struggle with student debt. They are angry, and rightly so. Yet, they are vilified for their outspoken views and actions.
As for me, I am trying to quell that fear of the consequences of speaking out. Recently, I have lost family and friend relationships over my views.
But, I am putting my hand slowly back into the hand of the man from Galilee. I think "he's got me" on this. Jesus once used his righteous anger to clear the temple. Our righteous anger must clear the hatred from our land and from the world!
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