After driving a taxi cab for 9 years I accumulated thousands of experiences that I cathartically write about. This is my most recent photo essay as a seasonal piece for Christmas.
Over 46 years ago, when I was in the army I wrote a diary my last 165 days, with the intention of one day turning into a novel about what it was like to be a draftee stationed in the USA, during the peak of the war in Vietnam. I wanted it to be what “Here To Eternity” was to the army just before WWII, but I knew that I needed time to learn how to write and experience life first. So I put the diary in a box and kept it there for 30 years, while I lived my life. Then 30 years later in 1998 I transcribed it onto Microsoft word and saved it. I read it over and ruminated on it for another 10 years and even reconnected with an old army buddy. Then in 2008 I began writing the novel, using my diary for the skeletal framework to hang my story on. I used the diary structure, so there are 165 short chapters averaging 1300 words and totaling over 200,000 words. I completed my first complete draft on Monday, November 3, 2014. Now I will go through it and edit it, which will probably take me 3 – 6 months. This is the introduction.
165 Days Short
or
Repercussions From the Summer Of Love At Ft. Sill, Oklahoma
By: Bob Gersztyn
Back in the late 1960’s, if you enlisted or were drafted into the U.S. Army you could plan on spending 1 or 2 years in Vietnam, Korea, Germany and/or the U.S.A. Stateside duty could mean a gravy tour if you got the right assignment. If you ended up at Ft. Ord, California you could go to Frisco and Berkley, Ft. Dix, New Jersey was near New York City and Ft. Polk, Louisiana had New Orleans and the Mardi Gra a couple of hours away. Where ever you ended up one thing was for sure, going to town meant that you could act like a civilian for a few hours. Some guys even got stationed close enough to home that they could visit their families whenever they wanted to.
The downside of a domestic tour was experienced when you were stationed at a base located in the middle of nowhere, next to a small town that existed solely as a result of the post’s presence. In such cases the population’s attitude towards the GI’s vacillated between gratitude and animosity. Such was the case with Ft. Sill, which was adjacent to Lawton in south central Oklahoma, about 50 miles from the Texas border. Lawton came into existence as a result of Ft. Sill being established. People felt safer living next to a fort full of soldiers, in hostile Indian country.
Ft. Sill has been the home of the “U.S. Field Artillery Center and School” since 1911. General Phillip Sheridan founded it in 1869, when he was conducting a winter campaign, against the Southern Plains tribes. During the late 1870’s the “Buffalo Soldiers” of the 9th and 10th cavalry were stationed there and supplied much of the labor in the construction of the Fort. By the late 1960’s it was in full swing as a training base for artillery units going over to Vietnam.
Lawton is located a few miles south of the base and was founded in 1901. At that time a lottery was held distributing 160 acre parcels to white settlers on what was then the Kiowa-Comanche reservation. The town was named after General Henry W. Lawton. It is the third largest city in the state, as well as the cultural and economic center for the region. Cattle, dairy, agriculture and the military make up the primary industries for the area. Cameron College, home of the Aggies was located within the city limits, and drew students from surrounding areas. The combined population for Lawton/Ft. Sill amounted to nearly 100,000.
All unmarried GI’s lived on base in military barracks. The quarters varied from wooden frame structures to newer cinder block and even brick buildings. Non-training semi-permanent support units were housed in the newer facilities, for the most part.
After Toby Grines was drafted in August of 1966, he ended up in two of those support units. First he was assigned to the 395th Engineering Company, since he was a carpenter. At least that was what his M.O.S. (Military occupation) was. It said he was a 51B20, so he was placed in the carpentry platoon, where he worked with guys who had been building houses, during the economic boom that was happening. The only problem was that he had never done any construction carpentry work. Back home in Detroit, Michigan Toby had been a wood pattern making apprentice, learning how to construct precision automotive die patterns, for the big three (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler). When the personnel clerk saw the word wood associated with Toby’s occupation he figured that he was a carpenter. Toby immediately submitted a 1049 requesting A.I.T. (Advanced Individual Training) M.O.S. training for carpentry or another military occupation.
So they sent Toby to school, and trained him to be an armorer (small arms weapons specialist). He was able to perform second echelon maintenance one everything from 45 cal. pistols, to M14’s, 16’s, M-79’s, 60mm and 50 caliber machine guns. He had it made, and was exempt from all duty, and spent most of his day reading, talking to the unit mail clerk or playing solitaire.
Then in the summer of 1967, after PFC Grines went on leave for two weeks, the guy who took his place accidentally gave Captain Archer’s (the company commander) gas mask to an enlisted man during maneuvers. Captain Archer’s specially made eyeglasses were in the mask, and the man took them out. Toby was blamed in retaliation and he was transferred out of the unit to headquarter battery of the 3rd Field Artillery and Missile Group.
Since the headquarters unit didn’t pull guard duty, or have field maneuvers, it needed no weapons. Therefore it had no armory, other than 7 – 45cal. Pistols, which had to be checked and cleaned once per month, and this could be done in a couple of hours. Therefore it didn’t need a full time company armorer.
Since Toby still had his carpenter MOS he was assigned to the new unit primarily as the R&U (Repair & Utility) man. The R&U position was the military equivalent of building maintenance. Toby’s days were spent repairing venetian blinds, replacing light bulbs and mowing the lawn and building or repairing whatever he was assigned to do. It wasn’t a very glorious position for a gung ho 20 year old.
As Toby began his second year of service he found himself in the new unit. It was a headquarters unit, which meant that it was made up of officers, clerks and short timers. There were two kinds of short timers; those who would be E.T.S-ing (Estimated Time of Separation) soon and those who would be shipping out for an overseas tour of duty.
The headquarters unit was smaller than the 395th and only had one platoon, which was called an artillery battery because it belonged to a heavy duty weapons Group. It only occupied the ground floor, while the 4/46th artillery battery occupied the top 2 floors. 3rd Group had a commanding officer, an XO and a first Sergeant, but the most important difference was the additional brass. It had everything from a full bird Colonel to a Sergeant Major, with a light Colonel, Majors, Captains, beaucoup First and Second Lieutenants and Warrant Officers in between. They all worked in personnel or in the group headquarters Block house. None of them resided in the barracks with the enlisted men.
Soon after being assigned to Headquarters battery of the 3rd Field Artillery & Missile Group, Pfc. Grines was promoted to Specialist 4th class. With the promotion came an additional job. The unit mail clerk received his orders for Vietnam, so SP/4 Grines took his place. Mail came twice a day, both in the morning and the afternoon. The mail clerk sorted and distributed it.
While the 395th was made up of macho beer brawling construction worker draftee’s and lifers, 3rd Group was comprised of intellectual wanabee’s, college dropouts and pot smoking hippies. The disparity between the units even manifested itself in the music they played. Instead of hearing “The Righteous Brothers”, Smokey Robinson, Mitch Ryder and B.J. Thomas the windows were vibrating with “Country Joe & the Fish”, Bob Dylan, “Jefferson Airplane” and Jimi Hendrix.
The “Summer of Love” took place 1700 miles west, in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco, but its repercussions were felt even in the heart of Oklahoma. Some GI’s grew mustaches, wore love beads and even dared to wear peace symbols. Toby quickly integrated into 3rd Group and found himself thinking and talking about issues in ways that he hadn’t before. He began using mind altering substances, and even incurred a head injury during this time. The Army didn’t test for drugs at the time, because it wasn’t an issue, yet.
During this 165 day period Toby goes through a metamorphosis that takes him from being a Warren, Michigan, Roman Catholic tough guy, to a peace and love hippie and beyond. This all takes place in L.B.J.’s “New Action Army”, after the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam. It’s a time of unprecedented cultural, political and religious upheaval, and the Army is the meeting ground for young men to share their ideas with each other as they fulfill their destinies.
By the time he had less than 6 months of his two year hitch left, SP/4 Grines considered himself to be a short timer. Most soldiers don’t consider you a short timer until you break 100 days, but Toby didn’t care. Another idea that coincided with his decision to don the short timer mantle was keeping a daily diary. On Saturday, March 2, 1968, with only “165″ days left in the army he made his first entry, and continued to do so until the day that he was discharged. This is that record.
By Bob Gersztyn
This is a continuation of my interview with Wiccan radio talk show host Marcus Tempe. We continued to talk about the battle between cultures and religions as human civilization evolved into its current manifestation.
THE DOOR: An objective study of world history reveals that every culture and ethnic group has relocated, exterminated or assimilated another. Some feel that this progression of history is in actuality orchestrated by a shadow organization, who in fact call the shots. This organization is usually associated with Witchcraft and the occult. What do you know about the illuminati?
THE BEAR: Robert Anton Wilson wrote a wonderful series of books of fiction. I enjoy the heck out of it; he did something that is absolutely crucial to any storyteller. He borrows enough of the truth to be able to make you go, you know that sounds possible. What if? Now he’s got you. Any good science fiction writer will base his story on good hard practical scientific fact. State of the art technology that goes one step further. What if? Political theory as far as criminal conspiracies are concerned are very much the same sort of thing. People can take any three unrelated facts and go, what if? Maybe they’re on to something, but maybe they’re not.
THE DOOR: You can’t fool us. What do you know about the controlling council on the 7th level of the illuminati, and its plans to subjugate the entire human race for its evil purposes?
THE BEAR: Absolutely nothing. Frankly I’m more concerned about 2nd Amendment issues. Because I am one of those rarities, an ACLU supporter, who has been invited by the ACLU as a moderator of one of their forums on a new web site they are putting up. This will take place when the move from AOL occurs. AOL has invited the ACLU to end its interaction and its website in AOL’s umbrella. The move will take place sometime during November 1999. This has got a lot of people very upset, because AOL has come across like they are kicking out the ACLU. The ACLU has maintained a presence there for a number of years and this is not what I would regard as a good thing.
THE DOOR: Wait a minute. The ACLU is being kicked off AOL because of its support of the 2nd Amendment?
THE BEAR: No. Mainly because of 1st Amendment violations. There are occasions where people will use dirty words, and naughty language and talk about female body parts. This has a lot of the more Church Lady types in the AOL user community very upset with the ACLU because they allow dirty words in ACLU discussions. Isn’t this terrible? No it isn’t. But it’s modern day American Protestant Christianity that has recognized or attached to these particular body functions and body parts the dirty word syndrome. Every time that you establish something as sinful simply because it’s sinful. It says in scripture here it’s sinful. Then reason and judgment effectively shut down. You have people who have made up their minds and stop looking. You can’t have a free and open discussion and explore possibilities if you’re worried about dirty words violating some ancient sheep herders taboo, out of a body of lore that was put together 4 or 5,000 years ago.
THE DOOR: I guess you don’t agree with Josh McDowell then? What do you think will eventually happen with religion on a global scale?
THE BEAR: I think that we’re heading to a shift in consciousness. If you read books like Jose Ortiaz and The Mayan Factor, if you read any of the works on Native American traditions, the Hopi elders, the prophecies that they have. New interpretations of Nostradamus coming through. A lot of different teachers and seers and forecasters have come to the conclusion that we are entering a paradigm shift, which is going to be a pretty bumpy ride for the next 15 years or so.
THE DOOR: So you equate Nostradamus with Native American Seers.
THE BEAR: I think that if you have the same message coming across like boats, there’s going to be a major change in the world happening between now and 2015. Be prepared for it. You see these things happening in the Mayan’s, in the Hopi, in the Navajo, in Nostradamus and in people who are doing interpretations of a lot of sources. We need to at least look at these things, and see if the forecasters and visionaries are right. Even if not.
THE DOOR: Even Christianity has its doomsday prophets going back to Jesus Himself.
THE BEAR: However, Christianity generally does not check itself with non-Christian sources. The people I’m talking about are coming from Native American sources, from Nostradamus, which is a cabalistic magick source, from people who are psychics, which gets into ESP and the parapsychology field, which may have absolutely nothing to do with either Native American or Cabalistic magick. The point is, when you have all these different people, from all these different traditions saying, yeah we’re entering into a bad patch, the prudent person would say, just in case the power does go out and the flood waters do rise I think it would be prudent to lay in an extra case of food and maybe another couple of dozen candles. Just in case. Because even if nothing happens it’s like having insurance. Very cheap insurance to guarantee your survival over a bad patch. Whether the disaster happens to be Y2K,or going through a bad winter, like a couple of years ago, with the flood waters rising above the 500 year flood level, or a sustained blizzard or the long overdue earthquake actually strikes. Fill in the blanks for whatever disaster happens to strike.
THE DOOR: Let’s go back to your sources of information. You said witches are very eclectic and choose from a smorgasbord of spiritual ideas, borrowing from any and all existing religions. Yet there are these rituals that you speak of and I assume they go back a long ways.
THE BEAR: They are an attempt to reconstruct from fragments of oral tradition, which is all that we have left after the burning times.
THE DOOR: So there were books that were written and burned? During which period?
THE BEAR: No, no not books that were written, oral traditions that were handed down from high priestess to student. Often times from Mother to daughter or from Father to son. I know a few people who claim a family tradition of witchcraft. They are called Famtrad for short. Family traditional witches have a certain body of lore, which they don’t teach to anybody outside of that family. They claim the lore was handed down from generation to generation. These people are very hard to get to talk about any of this.
THE DOOR: Why?
THE BEAR: Because, the penalty for revealing this was usually a short trip to being burned at the stake. So what we do have in the way of modern witchcraft are fragments of oral tradition, which are handed down in story. Discovered by people like Gerald Bruce O’Gardiner, who wrote about witchcraft for the first time, in modern times, in 1950.
THE DOOR: What was the title of the book?
THE BEAR: He originally wrote a book called “High Magic”, by the pen name Seire. Then he wrote a couple of other books on modern day witchcraft, which you can find in major libraries and occasionally you’ll find in large bookstores, like Powell’s, here in Portland. Gerald Bruce O’Gardiner is credited with being sort of the father of the modern resurgence of witchcraft.
THE DOOR: He was a witch himself?
THE BEAR: He was a practicing witch himself. He claimed that he had been introduced and initiated into Wicca by a family traditional witch in England.
THE DOOR: How many witches are there worldwide would you say?
THE BEAR: Impossible to estimate. In the United States I’ve heard figures anywhere from 100,000-600,000.
THE DOOR: So way under a million.
THE BEAR: I’ve talked to Z Budapest who is another very well known figure in the witchcraft world. She is a refugee from Hungary. She got out of Hungary after the 1956 Soviet invasion, when she was 16 years old. She feels that with family traditionalists it’s impossible to make an accurate estimation worldwide.
THE DOOR: Is there any sort of Wiccan governing structure? Do you ever combine forces for a specific purpose and how?
THE BEAR: It depends on the issue for example on the Web you will find the coalition for religious freedom that is run by an attorney in Pennsylvania, who is also a practicing, witch. You will find the WADL (Witches Anti Discrimination League). That is another long running pagan religion organization. Locally we have the nine houses of Gaia and many of the groups listed in the community directory will be able to turn you on to additional groups, which they are local chapters of or have a loose working relationship with.
THE DOOR: What about you specifically? When and what were the circumstances of your becoming a witch?
THE BEAR: I began my spiritual pursuit when I was between 13 & 15 and decided consciously to actually stop being a good Catholic kid, according to my mom.
THE DOOR: Mom should know.
THE BEAR: By the age of 17 I completely severed all ties with the Catholic Church and really began an active pursuit of my own spiritual traditions. I became interested in Zen Buddhism. I read a lot of works by David Reps, who is an American Zen Buddhist.
THE DOOR: How did you get interested in your spiritual pursuit initially?
THE BEAR: As I became more of an adult I began to realize that what I had been taught as the answers were not complete answers. Somebody was holding something back. There were things happening that did not make sense. For example, the teaching and decimation of the Catholic Church is that this is the be all and end all of solution. This is the one possible answer, this explains everything, and it’s not only ridiculous, it’s a mortal sin to start inquiring any further. Well the more education I got, especially by the time I got into college and started taking courses in philosophy, anthropology and other things that you normally don’t get taught in Jr. High School, I began to realize that there were a lot more answers, and also a lot more questions, than the Catholic Church had been willing to teach me as a kid. I became interested in witchcraft in the early 70’s and was initiated into witchcraft in 1975. So I’ve been a practicing pagan for almost a quarter of a century now.
THE DOOR: How old are you now.
THE BEAR: Lets see, what year is this? 51.
THE DOOR: How have other religions treated Paganism, Witchcraft, etc.? Whether Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Islam, whatever, in countries like India, Japan or Saudi Arabia. Do they have any sort of policy against it?
THE BEAR: As a rule in a Muslim country, today for example, you are technically allowed to have a book of your own particular religion. For example Christians are theoretically allowed to bring in a Bible. However, Islam in practical terms can be very, very intolerant about public celebrations of anything other than Islam. To an extent, I found that in the brief visit that I made to Israel, I found that attitude also applied to a nation, which had based itself upon the Jewish religion. To a lesser extent you may find that in other countries such as Japan, which as you pointed out is officially Shintoist, but which also has a large Buddhist population. The Buddhist countries however, such as Thailand are generally quite open and accepting of a wide variety of other religions. I spent two years in Saudi Arabia, which gave me a good up close look at a fundamentalistic religious theocracy, in 1980-82.
THE DOOR: Why were you there?
THE BEAR: I was on contract, as a computer technician and light equipment maintenance technician, with a company installing a medical computer system. The first one to go into Abha, the capital of the Asir Highlands, in Southwest Saudi Arabia.
THE DOOR: Ah yes, one of our favorite places. What were your observations and conclusions?
THE BEAR: I had a chance to see what Islam is like from the inside, up close and personal. I went, that’s interesting. When I came back to the United States it also gave me very sharp appreciation about what it is like to live in a free country, as opposed to what it is like to live in a theocracy. Then I began working very seriously on the idea of promoting in whatever humble way that I could the notion of getting people to use their thinking of spirituality in terms of not sacrificing their souls to God, but using it as a vehicle of personal liberation, on a level that has not been normally experienced before. Most questions of liberation politics at that time had been political not economic. I wanted to expand the realm, because I believe very strongly that the spiritual element is precisely where questions of freedom are decided, and that any spiritual tradition that emphasizes freedom is one worth looking at. That tied very well into my training and experience in Wicca.
THE DOOR: What about Jesus’s statement in the Gospel of John concerning knowledge of the truth being the catalyst for freedom?
THE BEAR: First of all, that’s an example of something that a Wiccan, or Pagan, or Buhhdist, or Hindu or somebody else might find to be very true, because it is true whether or not it’s in the Bible, Koran, Torah, Bagavad Gita or any other sacred text. In other words you do not accept something that’s true simply because of the authority figure attached to it you accept it as true because it checks out. It checks out and it happens to ring true. It’s something that you can rely on. In the case of Wicca, the idea is that you are responsible for your spirituality. You are responsible for putting yourself through the training and discipline.
THE DOOR: Somebody had to train or at least get you pointed in the right direction occasionally. Who was that?
THE BEAR: The lady who inducted me into Wicca is living on the Oregon coast right now. She’s in her 60’s. She was a very good friend, who was a practicing witch for a number of years. She initiated me into the Wicca tradition as a Gardinarian witch.
THE DOOR: Gardinarian, is that like a denomination?
THE BEAR: Gerald Bruce O’Gardiner established a tradition of witchcraft through his books and through his students, who all went on to teach other witches. That’s why Gardiner is regarded as the father of modern witchcraft.
THE DOOR: Just like John Wesley is the father of Methodism or even the first Pope?
THE BEAR: Not like the pope, more like John the Baptist. He was a voice crying in the wilderness to make clear the path.
THE DOOR: So then, is there a Messiah coming?
THE BEAR: No. That whole Messiah trip, you have to; again this is the trap of Orthodox Christianity and the mindset. Christians are very guilt driven. They believe that we’re guilty and that the Messiah died for our sins, he’s gonna come back, and that sins will be washed away. This whole sin, guilt, fear trip is something that is very particular to the Semitic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is not something that has any parallel with the normal pagan religions that you’ll find elsewhere in the world.
THE DOOR: So, you don’t have any guilt problems?
THE BEAR: No. We don’t have a guilt problem as far as original sin and the whole concept of sin, because we have a sense of right and wrong.
THE DOOR: Then you believe in free will?
THE BEAR: Yes, as a matter of fact I believe that the free will we exercise directly creates the manifestation of the universe that we experience. In other words, free will is the way that we approach the limitless facets of the diamond. Which facet we choose to look at, that is the exercise of our free will.
THE DOOR: What about good and evil?
THE BEAR: I believe in the “as ye sow, so shall ye reap” type of approach, or looking at it from the viewpoint of other people: “By their fruits ye shall know them”.
THE DOOR: That sounds familiar. What if you were put in a situation where you were forced to do something that was evil in order to survive? As an example you embezzled some money from your work to avoid bankruptcy. How would you view this?
THE BEAR: You would have to look at the harm done and the total dynamic of who was doing what. Who benefited from it, who lost from it?
THE DOOR: So you’re advocating relativism?
THE BEAR: In my personal book I’d say that relativistic ethics are probably about the only ethics that you actually can apply to the real world. Because the exact same action in 12 different environments and circumstances could have 12 different evaluations and 12 different consequences. For example killing someone: “Thou shalt not kill”. The Bible says, according to Billy Graham and some other Fundamentalist ministers “Thou shalt not murder”. Lets take it at the face value that most people are familiar with. “Thou shalt not kill.” Okay, I teach armed self-defense as a certified pistol instructor. I have an Oregon concealed handgun licensee. I have one of the first 2000 licensees issued in the state for 10 years now. I have come close to dropping the hammer on 4 maybe 5 people in the last 10 years. I also work security so that ups my exposure to situations. Do I feel happy about the prospect of taking a life? No. Would I hesitate to take a life if in my estimation that became necessary? No, because at this point I’ve rehearsed it and studied the issue and I’m aware of the full dynamics of actions, contributing factors, and the repercussions, which would flow from that, to be able to widen the game so to speak. In other words I don’t look at just the killing itself, but everything that led up to the killing, the killing and the results that flowed from the killing, as part of an integrated dynamic. All of which have to be looked at. If for example the person I encountered happened to be a career felon and I didn’t kill them, I feel that I would share in the moral blame that would accrue from every criminal act in the future that, that person would commit.
THE DOOR: I guess you would support capital punishment then?
THE BEAR: In certain circumstances. Again, there have been too many cases where capital punishment has been to hastily applied or applied to the wrong person. That’s legalized murder.
THE DOOR: In a case like John Wayne Gacy or Jeffrey Dahlmer, who have committed heinous crimes, yet are indifferent to them, and may even be psychologically incapable of complying with societies laws or morality. What would your verdict be?
THE BEAR: In my book that person has volunteered for the death penalty.
THE DOOR: Interesting. Let’s go back to guilt for a minute. According to Freudian psychology human beings are motivated by guilt stemming from suppressed thoughts and experiences, ranging from infantile masturbation to oedipal fantasies and beyond. How do you view this?
THE BEAR: Freudian guilt is the product of an essentially Christian culture.
THE DOOR: So then if there were no Christianity there would be no Freud?
THE BEAR: Without Christianity there would be no Freud. There would be no need for a Freud.
THE DOOR: What about Jung?
THE BEAR: Jung is a different case. Jung very much focused on archetypes. He believed that people regardless of culture or background felt and experienced certain spiritual truths in much the same way. It’s simply the the symbolism and the language by or through which they interpreted that transmortal experience varied from person to person and culture to culture, and there’s good argument for that.
THE DOOR: So then in some cases, as you’ve already stated you’re in agreement with certain parts or pieces of different religions and philosophies but you don’t have any particular set structure, except the book you mentioned by Gardiner?
THE BEAR: Even that has been extensively modified.
THE DOOR: Okay, lets put it another way. If somebody wants to become a Christian what they do is find a church. Next they ask to speak with the Pastor, they tell him “I want to become a Christian.” Next the minister will tell them whatever that denominational formula requires for them to become a good Christian.
THE BEAR: Accent on the word formula. It’s a very external structure imposed. You see in the founding days of Christianity.
THE DOOR: Yeah, but how do you do that with Witchcraft? Let’s forget about Christianity for the moment. How would anyone even begin to look? Are their any witch ministers, clerics, priests, priestesses etc.?
THE BEAR: In some cases. Again study the list of organizations in the directory I gave you and ask for some basic information. You’ll find a huge range of responses. Some people who practice paganism and witchcraft adopt or create a very hierarchical structure. There will be initiates, 1st degree witches, 2nd degree witches and 3rd degree witches.
THE DOOR: Is this group called a coven?
THE BEAR: Yes, a coven. They will have the kind of formal structure that you’re talking about. Some people function best in that type of formal structure. Other people are solitary witches; they will have nothing to do with a coven. In fact they will often times have only a few years of training, or they will be entirely self taught. Some people find that they adhere to a particular divinity. In fact I’ve talked to some witches who have actually had an intense visualization of some goddess or god figure, totally unexpectedly, without anything in their background to predicate that, that is the goddess or god figure to whom they would give their allegiance. Others, like me are syncretic or eclectic. We look and we find things that are true in many different god forms, and many different pantheons in many different disciplines including religions that have very little if anything to do with Witchcraft, such as Christianity.
THE DOOR: An evangelical Christian would call these visualizations of gods and goddesses a demonic experience. From a Jungian perspective then you would have had an archetypal experience. However, putting that aside for the moment, what good are these experiences?
THE BEAR: I’m relating them to how people see the truth. Some people need and depend upon a very rigid structure. They’re going, okay I have jumped through these particular hoops, I’ve taken this particular training, I must be doing this right. That’s the particular structure with which they approach the universe.
THE DOOR: Then there’s the Zen Buhhdist approach where you have to come to a point where you know nothing.
THE BEAR: That’s my point, everything is illusion, it’s all a matter of will. Read the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The opening chapter is essentially a recitation of about how everything is a matter of the viewpoint that you choose or allow yourself to default to. What is the Ultimate reality?
THE DOOR: Please tell us.
THE BEAR: Well, from a mortal viewpoint you will find as many different answers as you’ll find mortals. The whole purpose of the show in the practice of the show in the practice of paganism, that I personally adhere to is, by their fruits you shall know them.
THE DOOR: Where have we heard that before?
THE BEAR: If somebody is on a particular path that reads well upon them, they’re bright eyed, bushy tailed, happy, productive and a benefit to the people around them. You can tell by their body language, posture, tone of voice, how they relate and how they handle themselves in their relationships, whether they are a healthy or not healthy individual. Then I don’t really care what the name of the religious structure of the spirituality is that you hang on it. Sahheed Hamid for example is a Black Muslim. He is also a friend. He has been a friend of my families and mine for more than 20 years now. He is probably as far away from my particular spiritual orientation as you could possibly get. In that he’s African American, he’s a Muslim practitioner, he is very loyal to his faith and has found a huge amount of benefit in Islam. I’ve had him on my show and we’ve spoken of this at length. The commonality that we experience however, is not one of the same ritual, or the same name of God or even the same practice of spirituality. The commonality we see, is that each of us recognize that the other is on a path which is good for us, because we are benefiting the lives of those around us.
THE DOOR: What occupation do you work in to pay the bills?
THE BEAR: I’m in the security field right now. I’ve been trained and licensed by the State of Oregon as a private security advisor site supervisor for a local security company. I’m also a certified pistol instructor and I do self-defense training, as well as working with a martial arts school.
THE DOOR: So you are proficient in all these self defense techniques?
THE BEAR: Yes, I believe in the concept of personal empowerment.
THE DOOR: So then witchcraft isn’t pacifistic?
THE BEAR: Witchcraft is, in that most people are what I would call bunny huggers. They are very pro-ecology and pro-animal rights. Their lifestyle and mindset reflects this. Ninety nine out of a hundred would not know which end of a firearm goes bang.
THE DOOR: You already said that you supported capital punishment if the crime warranted it. What about abortion?
THE BEAR: I come down on the side of “free choice,” with the proviso that any man who attempts to pass judgment on what any woman does with her body is showing perhaps more bravery than sense. Women, I’ve noticed, get into one form of Paganism or another because they’re drawn to the empowering aspects of spirituality that emphasizes the pre-eminence of feminine over masculine power, the Goddess over God; Witches like Z Budapest or Starhawk in San Francisco have strong opinion on the subject, which they’ve written books about. At the same time, Pagans disagree about abortion probably as much as they disagree about vegetarianism, or any other political subject. Sienna, a Witch friend of mine in Vancouver, who own Laughing Bird Books and teaches classes on Witchcraft, said, “Getting Pagans to agree on ANYTHING is like herding cats.”
THE DOOR: Very interesting. While were on politically controversial subjects How about drug usage to enhance the spiritual dimension, much like Native Americans and other regional aboriginal peoples use conscious expanding substances, such as mescaline, psilosybin or marijuana in their rituals?
THE BEAR: I know of no Pagans who use drugs as part of ritual; raising the “Cone of Power” requires discipline, the ability to visualize clearly, and the ability to coordinate and work well with other in the Circle—all of which are skills which are damaged or defeated by drugs, not enhanced by them. The kind of “high” you get from any pharmaceutical means that it’s the pharmaceutical that’s working—not you; so, whatever “power” you think you’re generating, is strictly a chemical-based delusion. True, there ARE some ethnic groups whose spiritual traditions involve psychedelics like peyote and mescaline—but as their “medicine men” and “medicine women” will tell you, it takes literally years of work, training, and discipline (there’s that word again), studying as an apprentice under a master of some sort, before you can safely and effectively use drugs as a tool for the controlled raising and directing of spiritual or Magickal “Power” of any sort.
Unfortunately, in this day and age of instant gratification, there are too may teenyboppers who’ve seen The Craft or The Blair Witch Project, picked up a book, and decided that they’re “really” Witches and so want to be casting spells, etc.—and right now. Since they’re used to getting high, they figure, “Why not?” and start to “experiment” with ritual Magick and various drugs. However, teenagers will be teenagers, and may have to learn the hard way that drugs don’t “improve” anything you do that’s at all important—including raising Power and working Magick. This is not to say that Neo-Pagans are all prudes and teetotalers. Some are; others aren’t, to varying degrees, just like the population at large. I know of one Pagan who drinks, smokes tobacco, AND smokes pot; his wife smokes tobacco and pot, but doesn’t drink. Another Pagan friend of mine drinks occasionally, but doesn’t smoke anything at all. The basic rule, again, is what we know as the Wiccan Rede:
“Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill;
An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will.”
When you couple that with the Three-fold Law—that what you do, will rebound upon you three times, good returning for good and evil returning for evil—you’ll find that most Neo-pagans (both drug-users and “straight) just don’t abuse, misuse, or over-indulge in drugs of any sort. There’s no point to it, and some heavy dues to pay for screwing up, so why bother?
THE DOOR: Do you believe in God?
THE BEAR: A divinity? Yes. God in term of Jehovah or Yahweh? No.
THE DOOR: Do you believe in a personal God?
THE BEAR: Myself, I’d have to say no. I believe in a trans-mortal something, but it’s bigger than I am and I haven’t got the means to put a handle on it. Let alone define it and label it.
THE DOOR: What about the devil?
THE BEAR: The devil? Satan? Prince of evil? Christian concept. Anti-God. I gave that up when I gave up the church.
“What If God Was One Of Us?” was a top 40 radio hit in 1996 and catapulted Joan Osborne into the position of being one of Americas top female vocalists. It was a time when female vocalists were making as big an impact on the music charts as their male counterparts. Artists like Tracy Chapman, Sheryl Crow Sarah McLachlan brought the feminine side of transcendence back into the musical mix like it was when folk and rock touched through the music of Bob Dylan and the Byrds. Back then artists like Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell and Carole King represented the feminine mystique.
So when “One of Us” hit the charts against all odds, because of its religious content and message, it drew attention like the siren’s did Odyseus. Eric Bazillian of the 1980’s new wave band the Hooters wrote the song to capture the heart of a girl, who later became his wife. The story reminded me of how Randy Stonehill wrote “King of Hearts” as a result of failing to write a love song directed to the girl of his dreams and later changed the direction to the almighty diety that most people call God, The Wholly Other or the unspeakable glory known in the Bible as the Tetragrammaton. Bazillian and another former Hooter, Rob Hyman discovered Osborne singing in a bar and decided to record her, so they put together a band that they performed in and recorded an album that they primarily wrote the songs for. The album showcased Osborne’s incredible vocal range that established her as one of the best female vocalist’s in the country, if not the world.
Osborne is a blues singer, but at the same time she has an expanded perspective on music that delves into a spiritual dimension as deep as gospel, but from an Eastern perspective. Even before she caused a theological firestorm, when “One of Us” became a top 40 hit and she got 5 Grammy nominations, she was a student of Sufi devotional music, called qawwali. Sufism is Islamic in origin, resulting from 11th century Persians immigrating to the region that became known as Pakistan, but was then India. It is mystical and introspective in nature and the purpose of the music is to achieve transcendence beyond sexuality. That was back in 1996, when “One of Us” was still a top 40 radio hit.
So now fast forward 18 years and Osborne isn’t backed up by her bar band that accompanied her for her Relish tour, but the Holmes Brothers a black gospel group that she helped produce albums for as well as appearing on them and vice versa. The Holmes Brothers took the stage and performed “Amazing Grace” as their opening number and then did 2 others before Osborne joined them. Once she hit the stage and opened her mouth, the heavens opened and she covered everything from the Grateful Dead to Ike and Tina Turner, with as much passion and transcendence as Ustad Fateh Ali Khan.
Once again I am going to change the concept of this blog as it evolves just like my life did. Everything takes on a life of its own if you let it, or should I say, if you choose to walk down all the paths that open up to you after you knock on their portals for entry. My path took me from rock & roll to only Christian music and then as the heathen rock & rollers became born again back to rock & roll again. So why not present reports of secular concerts and events on this blog as well as Christian ones.
This past weekend I have been covering the Waterfront Blues Festival in Portland, Oregon and as we all know, the blues has its roots in gospel. In the early days of the 20th century many blues artists were ministers and sang gospel for the Lord on Sunday after singing blues for the devil on Saturday night. One of the first groups that I saw perform at the festival were one of the headliners, Los Lonely Boys. The band is made up of Henry Garza lead guitar, Jojo Garza bass and Ringo Garza drums. They rocked the house down with their powerful set and later performed with Los Lobos during the latter’s set.
The band is from Texas and was their fathers backup band from childhood into their teens. They’ve won a Grammy and had a hit record on the charts called “Heaven,” off their first album. To find out more about them, check out their website at: http://loslonelyboys.com/ For information about the Waterfront Blues Festival, go to: http://www.waterfrontbluesfest.com/ .
My book, Jesus Rocks The World, is specifically about music directed towards, about or somehow related to God, in a Christian sense. However, that in itself is a byproduct of the secular model, which itself was influenced by a more primitive spiritual model through the music created by slaves and their masters, over centuries of exploitation, pain, and suffering. Robert Darden’s excellent book, People Get Ready: A New History of Black Gospel Music, tells the story from the slave’s side.
I didn’t realize how important music was to modern civilization until I was an adult with children of my own who were listening to music. I listened to their music to filter what I wanted them to listen to, until they turned 18 and then turned them loose. At the same time I was always involved in music from a non musician’s point of view, so I observed it as a historian and have seen it involved in the toppling of governments from the U.S.S.R. to Egypt. Concerts themselves resemble church services to the point that they are interchangeable with mega churches featuring worship bands that have recording contracts.
The secular arena is filled with artists that reflect every point of view and musical taste, and over the decades I was present to observe hundreds of them at major concerts in both genres. As a rock and roll journalist I took thousands of photos of the groups to help document what I was experiencing. At home I surround myself with images that I developed and enlarged in my darkroom or had the custom lab print for me. Sometimes I would take a dozen images and cut them up to make a collage, as I recently did with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are not a religious act, but their music connects with much of the population on a spiritual level. I’ve attended a half dozen of their concerts since 1986, when they toured with Bob Dylan, and photographed the last two times. I decided to create a photo collage out of twenty images from my archive. After I assembled the collage I weighed it down with eight items that were small and had enough weight to prevent the glued foam core from warping during the drying time. When I looked at what I had, I took my digital camera that was one of the weights and took a photo of what looked to me like an altar or shrine. I even lit the candle that I bought one time when the electricity went out.
One day I was thinking about the current ongoing war on terror that world civilization saw begin on 9/11. It was a far cry from the anti-Communist war in Vietnam that precipitated a cultural civil war in the USA back in the 1960s. The current conflict is an ongoing event that generates casualties, on a global scale specifically targeting Western Christian civilization. The same guerrilla tactics that the Viet Minh confined to its borders in Vietnam are now being used by Al Queda and its allies on a world wide scale. Communism was a political ideology with a religious fervor that promoted atheism, while Islam is a fully developed world religion that has been around for 1400 years.
Islam, like Christianity, contains a variety of different factions that differ from each other on a variety of issues. However, the thing that they all hold in common is a belief that the Koran is the the received revelation of God through the prophet Muhammad, just as Christians believe that the Bible is God’s revelation received through its apostles and prophets. Neither Muhammad nor Jesus ever wrote one word of the scriptures that carry their messages, but their words and stories were recorded by their followers.
Over the centuries that Islamic culture has existed it’s expanded its borders from Saudi Arabia to every part of the earth, just as Christianity has done from Palestine. Sometimes the religions have been at odds with each other to the point of war. So, from the beginning there has been tension between the two faiths; however, most of the time they have managed to co-exist without incident.
After 9/11 it seemed like all the information that the news reported about Islam was about how blood thirsty and intolerant it was. The central teaching of the Koran that was pointed out by all the Western non-Muslim news pundits was Jihad. To me that was like pointing to the central teaching of the Bible being genocide based on Israel’s directive from God in the Old Testament to cleanse Palestine of everyone who lived there, tribe by tribe. I’ve read the Koran, but I don’t even begin to claim to be an authority on it. At the same time I have a degree in the Bible from a conservative Bible college and do know that the central teaching of Christian scripture is love. God is love and Christians are admonished to love others as God loves them.
The New Testament book of 1 Corinthians contains the most famous of all Christian teachings on love in the 13th chapter. The apostle Paul wrote a detailed explanation of exactly what love is and how it works. Since the New Testament was written in Greek, and Greek is a very exact language, having different words representing each aspects of a subject. In the case of “love” there were four common Greek words that could be translated as love. The first was “Storgē,” which is familial love, the love of parents towards children and children towards their parents. The second is “Phileo,” which is translated as brotherly love, that is the love of one human being for another. Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love was named after the word. The third is “Eros,” better known as lust or sexual love. The fourth word is “Agapē,” which is the pure unconditional love of God that gives without any expectation of reciprocation. Agape love is what 1 Corinthians chapter 13 is all about. It’s the love of mankind that Jesus Christ demonstrated by His death on the cross.
If all this is true, then God loves Islam and followers of Islam as much as Christians. If this is the case then why doesn’t the Christian church express this? Over the years that I was totally committed to Christian evangelism during the 1970s, one of the primary tools used in its implementation was bumper stickers for vehicles. We had everything from “Honk If You Love Jesus” to “I Found It” the slogan that Bill Bright and Campus Crusade were using for their goal of evangelizing the entire world. I think that the Christian church has completely missed an opportunity to demonstrate agape love towards our Muslim brothers and sisters who already respect the person of Jesus Christ. The way to do this is very simple. Just use the same tactics that Bill Bright used in the 1970s and then expand it into the 21st century. What we need today are bumper stickers that read “YAHWEH LOVES ALLAH” or “JESUS LOVES MUHAMMAD.”
The reason why I didn’t renew my ministerial credentials after they expired in 1983 was because I came to the realization that the reason why I decided to become a minister in 1974 could only be fulfilled by leaving that existing model of the ministry. The reason why I entered the ministry was to help people and tell them about the exciting new life I found in Jesus, but by 1980 that enthusiasm and excitement had been replaced by fear. Fear of being a failure as a minister and having to go back and live the life of a working class family man. By the time that the 1980s began, I realized that I had the raw information of 10 years of study and investigation swimming around in my head and I would be a fraud if I stood behind a pulpit in any church claiming that I understood it all and how it integrated with and related to life. I needed time to ruminate on all this information.
I needed to go out into the world and begin putting my theology to the test by putting myself in a position where I had to completely depend on God for everything. I once taught in a Bible study that we must all be willing to stand naked in the wilderness, with no possessions or friends, looking to Jesus as the source of everything. So I left the full time paid ministry and began wandering through my own wilderness as I moved my family cross country, seven times in six years, racking up over ten thousand miles. One time I even had to hitchhike 900 miles with only a suitcase and $10 in my pocket, hoping that a friend in Los Angeles would let me sleep at his house until I found a job and was able to move my family.
By 1984 I came to the realization that I was not politically suited to try and climb the ladder of pastoral success nor was I experientially ready to teach anyone about how to raise their kids and live their lives, since I was in the middle of learning that myself. Giving up the possibility of ever becoming a full time minister in a church again was hard to do, but if God had wanted me to continue to do it, I gave Him every opportunity to make it happen, even afterwards, but He never did. Once I gave up, I began to live my life as the salt that Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount. I re-entered the work force to support my family by first becoming a cook, then an automotive cleaning agent salesman, until I finally ended up getting re-instated to the U. S. Postal Service, where I had worked before becoming a minister.
I hated every minute of having to do jobs that I did not want to do instead of the ministry that I trained for and actually got paid to do for four years. By 1986 we ended up in Salem, Oregon where I transferred my job and worked for the U. S. Postal Service until I retired in 2004, at the age of 56. Along the way I followed my bliss in two areas of my life, first, by creating a family with my wife, life partner, and lover, Kathy. Second, I passionately used photography as a tool to record everything that was important to me along the way.
Because of following my bliss, by the early 1990s I had 7 children and was getting invited to photograph and publish images of some of the most historic music artists performing at the turn of the millennium. At the same time I began to publish articles that I wrote and began to conduct interviews for the Wittenburg Door, the magazine that became my primary teacher of spiritual things after I exhausted the Foursquare denomination’s ability to provide needed information. I was able to get press credentials, free tickets, and even back stage passes on occasion to everyone from the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones to Green Day and Rage Against the Machine. God had opened doors for me that I never asked to enter because I was too timid to try. I learned that God really does lead us if we choose to follow.
As I look back over my life I can see the times that God brought people into my life that I didn’t recognize at that time as being his messengers. There were people who would appear throughout my life to answer my questions, show me direction and act as my guide for a season. When they did appear it was as natural as anything that happened spontaneously, but at the same time it was a completely synchronistic coincidental event. All that was required on my part was to accept the information and invitations that these spiritual emissaries presented me with.
By the turn of the millennium in the 21st century my photography, journalism, and writing landed me writing contracts for encyclopedias, until I finally wrote and published my own two-volume history of contemporary Christian music. Even though I achieved a level of success as a photographer, journalist, and writer, I didn’t consistently make enough money to support myself and my family, so I continued to have a regular job of some kind. After I retired from the U. S. Postal Service and while I wrote encyclopedia articles and my two-volume book, “Jesus Rocks The World: The Definitive History of Contemporary Christian Music” I began to drive a cab three nights a week.
I found that my cab driving was not an ordinary job, but more of a ministry, because it involved helping people from all walks of life in every area of possibility. I was getting paid to do it, but then so do most ministers. As a taxi driver you weren’t expected to be a minister, it was just the job that you performed by driving the elderly, infirmed, drunk, depraved, insane, and other ordinary everyday people. Sometimes you could make a difference in someone’s life and other times you might get ripped off, insulted, or assaulted, but whatever the outcome it was all part of the job. It was the gospel of action rather than a gospel of words spoken from a pulpit. Instead of admonishing people to go out into the world and act as salt, light, yeast, and whatever other metaphors could be used to designate interaction with humanity, I was doing it myself by example. Wow!
Even though I didn’t renew my ministerial credentials, I didn’t abandon theological thought, but continued to study it and discuss it with anyone that was interested. Over the years I talked to thousands of people about every subject imaginable and heard more perspectives than I thought possible. I spent a lifetime ruminating on all the information that I absorbed while preparing for and being in the ministry. I talked to others all the time about my conclusions, which would sometimes bring reactions. Now I understand the ministry better than I did when I was in it, and I realize that I never left it.
I reconsidered my idea of what ministry is, after I transcended the limits of the man-made institution called the church. The word “ministry” is translated into English from Greek and Latin as the word servant, service, slave, and other related meanings. From a first century Jesus perspective, today’s clergy are servants of an elitist social entity like the Pharisees and Saducees were two thousand years ago. The established religious institution that Jesus railed against in his time never stopped existing. They just changed names and mythological stories. Over the past two millennia, individuals have risen up from every generation to become the Jesus of their age to their own generation, railing against the shallow superficiality of the religious institutions.
At this time I’m at the end of my life and I’ve lived long enough to experience enough reality to test most of the theology that I learned in Bible college, university, and through my own investigations. I was 33 when I first spun my cocoon and the metamorphosis began in 1980. A decade later as the 1990s began, I saw the first ray of light seep into my chrysalis, and by 1997 I completed my metamorphosis and was born again, again, again, again, again, again, again……….
Back in 1969, I was a hippie college student, going to college on the G.I. Bill, after my discharge from the army that I was drafted into in 1966. I was raised a Roman Catholic and continued to follow that faith, until it was obliterated in my expanded mind. One of my favorite hippie pastimes was going on LSD and mescaline trips. Some of them were very intense and life altering, as far as thinking about reality was concerned. During the summer of 1969, in Michigan where I lived, marijuana was harder to find than LSD. All the hippies were taking acid unless they had bad trips that turned them off to the mind altering hallucinogen. It was also the summer of Woodstock, the Baby Boomer rock music festival that established that generation as significant adults, who could vote and engineer gatherings of nearly ½ million.
Some of the LSD was imported from San Francisco by outlaw motorcycle gang members, who belonged to clubs like the Hells Angels, Mongols, and many others. If you knew a biker you could score big time, with some of the most perfectly manufactured LSD since Sandoz Pharmaceutical Labs ceased to produce the entheogen. Some of it was manufactured by Owsley Stanley, the Grateful Dead’s light technician and personal chemist. Marty was the name of the biker that I was connected with. I first met him through Marvin, a friend that I made in my first semester of college after getting discharged from the army. Marvin just got discharged from the army around the same time that I did, and he was also attending college on the G.I. Bill, so we hung out and partied together after school.
I purchased 5 hits of what Marty told me was Owsley Orange, for $3.00 each. It looked like dried orange plaster and was broken into hits ¼ inch square and 1/16 inch thick. He told me to only take ½ a tab because it was a heavy dose. When I left his house, I took ½ of one of the tabs as I was driving past Detroit City airport on Outer Drive the East side at around 7:30 PM. After I got home a little past 8:00 PM, I put 4 tabs of acid in my dresser drawer and took the other ½ tab at around 8:10 PM. Then I found out that Marvin had called, so I called him back and he said that he would be coming by with his fiancée, Mary, to pick me up to go to our hangout, the Duchess lounge, around 9:00 PM. I told him that I got some good acid from Marty and I already took some, so to be on time. He assured me that he would, so I got ready to go and by 8:30 I was feeling the effects of the drug. I killed time by listening to the radio until a few minutes before 9:00 PM when I shut it off and went upstairs from the basement and sat in a chair on our front porch.
It seemed like an eternity that I waited for Marvin to show up, but that was because the effect of the entheogenic agent was escalating. When he finally arrived I ran to his car and got in, as he drove off and tried to make small talk. I was succumbing to the effects of the hallucinogenic agent, so I was reticent and watched the lights as they burned with an intensity that I never noticed before and seemed to blur like a slow shutter speed photograph. When we arrived at the Duchess, it was a normal Tuesday night with a small crowd. The last thing that I remembered after we were seated was ordering a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, as the bar maid left, leaving a trail of stardust behind her as she walked away through a membrane that separated our reality from another one.
That other reality is where I remained for most of the rest of the night. It was the first time that I travelled there, although it wasn’t my last. I had dropped acid with Marvin and by myself around 30 times by now, but this was my first real trip, where I left my body and experienced the death of my ego and the birth of a new reality. The rest of the night was a traumatic experience, until finally a biker chick helped me come back to reality, and I truly became born again for the first time. As spring became summer I continued to trip, and by September when my second year of college started I was a veteran inner space astronaut.
I was taking an English writing class, where we read fictional short stories by everyone from Franz Kafka to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and wrote essays analyzing them. We also wrote papers about a variety of other subjects and were even given the opportunity to choose our own topic. For this paper I chose “The Purpose of Existence” as my topic. I drew my inspiration from the mind altering LSD trips that I was taking and had concluded that the purpose of existence was to fuck, because it served a double function of sustaining the existence of our species as well as achieving the greatest sensual pleasure possible in a relationship with another person.
I was given a B- grade for my paper, which in some ways was generous. As I read the paper today, 44 years later, I found that my logic was too simplistic and my examples were poor and even flawed. Over the next 2 years I continued to trip until my brain was completely fried and I decided to quit using mind expanding drugs and turn to religion for answers, since that is why they existed and most of them had been around for thousands of years. Since I was raised a Roman Catholic, I dedided that I was a Christian and decided to stick with what I already knew. I dug into it deeper, by beginning to read the Bible, starting with the gospel of Matthew in the New Testament.
A few months later I transferred my job with the postal service to Los Angeles, where I became a born again Jesus freak and discarded my pagan philosophies and theological systems and fully embraced conservative fundamentalist Pentecostal Protestant theology. After studying the Bible by repeatedly reading it, and attending church four days a week, I finally attended and graduated from Bible college where I read the scriptures in Greek and Hebrew.
After graduation I became a licensed and ordained minister, working as an associate pastor of a Foursquare church in the Los Angeles inner city with my wife and three children. The next 35 years saw me leave the ministry, travel the country searching for God’s will, until finally settling down in Salem, Oregon, where I worked for the US Postal Service until I retired and then drove a cab for 9 years. During the same four decades, I also worked as a freelance photographer, writer, and journalist covering rock and religion, first for the church and then for a variety of publications. Then one day, around 2003 or so, I began to think about my conclusions regarding the purpose of existence from 1969.
I began to think to myself, “if the Bible was actually inspired by God, then it should explain the purpose of existence. Where would that purpose be given?” I thought and then concluded that if God intended the Bible to be the answer to all of life’s questions and mysteries then it should be in an obvious place. The most obvious place I concluded would be the first sentence of the first paragraph of the first page of the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, better known as Genesis 1:1a. When you read Genesis using the Hebrew original language, the first words of the Bible are “Beresheet bara elohim,” which translate as “In the beginning God created.”
“In the beginning God created,” wow I thought, this is the same conclusion that I came to in 1969 on an acid trip. Creation is the purpose of existence. Creation is the source of one of humanity’s greatest pleasures as well as the way that we ensure the continuation of our existence. This is what God inspired the writer of the book of Genesis to say, and it was chosen by the Church Fathers to be the first book of their sacred text in their new religion called Christianity. Now it has been 17 centuries since the council of Nicea and the Bible is the central book for the Christian religion in both the Protestant and Roman Catholic sects.
♪Jesus♬Rocks♬The♬World♪ 