Southwest Sierra #114 – The Hope Essays: #2 Part 1

(Revisiting the writings of my youth) ~ I am sharing these essays originally written in Alleghany in 1994-1995, before the age of the internet and social media.

The Garden

I’m going to share the evolution of my personal beliefs as a means of providing a view of my heart. My heart is the source of my motivation for writing. This will also define words that I consider to be interchangeable and will illuminate my perspective on the “left” and “right”.

I was born in the spring of 1966. My mother was a Baptist. Her maternal grandfather was a Southern Baptist Minister. For the first eight years of my life, my family attended church every Sunday and I went to bible school. My formal education went as far as a high school Diploma. [Later I completed two years of college.] As a freshman in high school, I was required to write about my goals in life. I wrote: “I am a student of life. I will always be a student of life.” This has always been my attitude.

As far back as the age of four, I occasionally experienced this very strange feeling and wondering about how I could possibly exist. The answer finally came in my early 20s, like a breath of wind: “You are no more, no less than anything else”. Somebody could have told me this sooner, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Our minds and hearts will only accept wisdom that we are ready for.

At the age of seven I was standing on a bridge near our home in the suburbs of LA. The bridge spanned a drainage ditch that had a year-round stream in the bottom. I stood there gazing into the water while reflecting on the story of the Garden of Eden. I realized that the only reason it is “bad” is to be nude is because people think it is. It was at this age that my parents took me to have a talk with our minister. He said that I needed to ask Jesus into my heart and be baptized to be “saved”. I remember feeling very uncomfortable sitting in his office with my parents. I had always believed that Jesus was in my heart. I didn’t understand why I had to ask Jesus into a place where he already was. The pressure was on, so I said the words and was baptized.

When I was eight my parents, who had grown up in what was once rural Southern California, decided that it was time to move back to the country. They made a trip to visit friends who had recently moved to Marysville to explore Northern California. They found Grass Valley and liked it. When they got home, they sold and gave away everything that wouldn’t fit on our big flat-bed truck and the house sold immediately. We headed north.

Not long after our arrival in Grass Valley a family with two daughters (one my age, and one a year younger) moved in across the street from us. They had come from San Diego to get back to the country. Our families became good friends. It was my 9th summer when most of my family, (my parents, two younger brothers and I) and the family across the street moved about 40 miles northeast of Grass Valley to a gold mine near Alleghany. The cabins that we moved into had no electricity and were about a mile apart. This move to the woods was the most magical event of my childhood. We five kids had the time of our lives being set loose in the woods. At first, I was afraid to be alone in the forest, but it did not take long to overcome that fear. I soon grew to love exploring the woods alone. I ran barefoot all summer.

I entered fourth grade at Alleghany School. Kindergarten through 6th grade was in one classroom. Our teacher was a wonderful woman who we grew to love. When I was nine or ten, we had a chapter in our science book about evolution. On the chapter test I did not answer any of the questions. I scrawled “God made everything!” across the page. Later at recess I was sitting on a swing when my teacher came and sat on the swing next to me. She asked me what religion I was. I told her Baptist. She suggested that maybe evolution was how God made everything. I don’t remember my response. I think that I asked her what religion she was, because I learned that she was Catholic around this time. This gave me a lot to think about. I had always assumed that all the “good” people I knew were Baptist. As a matter of fact, I thought that just about everyone I knew was “good”. In church I had been taught that Catholics are idol worshipers who are going to hell.

To be continued