The Keepers of the House

I stayed up way too late last night finishing a paperback that I must have picked up at a thrift shop or garage sale. The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau deals with racism, tradition and belonging to the land in Southern society. Grau was born in New Orleans and her novels are about Southern life.

The story follows the Howland family and introduces each of the family keepers over the years in sections. Long-time land owners, rich and influential in their community, William Howland marries, but his wife dies in childbirth. His love for her prevents him from re-marrying. He meets a young, black woman who he falls in love with and brings into his home. They have three children together and end up raising his granddaughter Abigail. Abigail eventually becomes the keeper after she marries a racist man who is heavy into politics. This marriage eventually ends, the home is attacked and Abigail eventually, using her money and family history, seeks revenge upon the people of the town.

Grau sharply identifies attitudes of Southern people towards Negroes. The children of William and Margaret (the Negro woman) stand no chance of success in the area because of their mixed blood and are sent North for school. It also expresses the attitudes of Negroes to the White citizens, and the problems created for the mixed-race children.

It's sad that there are so many people yet in the United States who have these same attitudes. It is much more acceptable now for mixed marriages, but still is difficult at times for the child who is neither considered white nor black. Hopefully, through this generation we will become one nation of all races.

Jigsaw's

Today in Northwest Kansas, it's cold. At 10:50 am, the temperature is 8 degrees F. There is a very light snow falling. We need some moisture and I wouldn't mind seeing it continue to snow, but oh, is it cold.

I just found a couple of books laying around that I haven't read yet. Maybe I'll give them a try later today. In the meantime, I got out my card table and a jigsaw puzzle to help pass the time away. When the weather is like this, all I want to do is eat and sleep, and I don't need to do either.

When I was a young mother and lived in Colby, I used to bundle up the babies and go visit my Aunt Kathleen. One of the really neat things I remember about visiting her is that she always seemed to have a jigsaw puzzle in progress. She kept it on her table, and when she wasn't working on it, she would cover it with an oil cloth so the table was never really "out of service" because of the puzzle. I enjoyed very much sitting with her, talking and working on the jigsaw puzzle.

It's days like these that I wish that I were closer to my own family. It gets so lonesome when you just can't or don't get out and around. If I lived in Brewster, some of my grandkids would most likely stop in to see me often. I could bake cookies and goodies for them and just enjoy seeing them more than I'm able to here. Mom and Dad would be right there to visit, and so would my sister Jackie. She likes jigsaw's, too.

None of that is likely to happen right now so I guess I'll finish separating the edge pieces in the puzzle and start putting it together. While I do that, I'll think of Aunt Kathleen.

Lilies of the Field

Matthew 6:28
And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.

I just watched the movie Lilies of the Field. It's been years since I saw it, and I remembered liking it so much that I thought I would watch it again. As with many great movies, I saw things this time that I didn't notice before, or maybe I had just forgotten.

The passage in the Bible is Jesus talking to the people. He is telling them that if they have faith in God and seek his Kingdom first, then God will provide them with what they need. The nuns in the movie did just that, and God did provide.

Beyond that wonderful message, I noticed that there was quite a mixture of people. There were the nuns who came from Germany, the black man who built their chapel, and the Mexicans/Indians who helped to build the chapel. The priest and the man at the diner were both white Americans. The nuns were, of course, Catholic, but the man who built their chapel was Baptist. The man in the diner was a bit unsure of his faith.

The coming together of these people and their religion produced a chapel for them to go to for worship.

This is what I consider a Circle of Relationship. Race, religion and heritage did not matter. All that mattered was that this Circle of Relationship brought forth love, understanding and a beautiful chapel that the people would be able to use for years.

Hats off to my cousin Mary for her work with Habitat for Humanity. This is another great example of working together for something good.

The Shack 3

Good and evil. What exactly is good and evil? Can it be defined?

The idea of good and evil is formed in a person's mind according to what is good for him or not good for him. When we think of good, we think of those things that benefit us socially, financially or in any other way. When we think of evil, we think of things that will harm or hurt us. But is this a logical measure of good and evil?

The Civil War in the United States was fought to free people from slavery (a minor reason for the war, but present just the same). Is slavery evil? I think it depends on how you define it. The Southerners who had large plantations saw nothing evil about it and fought for it because it benefited them. Many of them still feel this way. The Northerners saw nothing good about it because it didn't benefit them in any way, and as they saw it, hurt other people.

Because of the Civil War, slaves were freed, or at least they were freed from bondage under plantation owners. Their freedom was not that easily attained because of prejudice. Once slaves were freed, they were still looked at as a lower class of people. Hate groups formed eventually such as the KKK. Blacks were harassed, killed and forced into positions of submission. They were not allowed in white schools. They rode in the back of a bus. There were many ways these people were abused. Was this evil? If you were raised to hate another race, it might be considered good. There are still people today that saw nothing wrong with slavery or black submission. All of this goes back to the idea of individualism vs a circle of relationships. Until we can accept all humans into our circle of relationships, there will be prejudice. Fortunately, we are making great advancements in this direction, but we still have a long way to go.

It seems as though I'm getting off the topic. Not really. In The Shack, Young talks about good and evil. People tend to work hard for what they consider good, things that benefit them, and will fight against what they consider to be evil because of fear. Sometimes the things people believe to be evil turns out good, or the good turns out evil. When your good clashes with someone's evil, war breaks out between you. Good and evil are just language with definitions formed in a person's mind. Papa says that we need to leave the concept of good and evil to him. He states that no one is completely good or evil. Even the man who killed Mack's daughter has some good in him, and Mack needs to forgive the man in order to have peace.

Why did we go to war in Iraq? Was it because there were weapons of mass destruction, or because we had an interest in their oil, or was it because we wanted to free the people from the pain, agony and death they were experiencing under Iraqi leadership? Was it because the Iraqi people were responsible for 9/11? All of these have been used as reasons to justify the war. It's sad that we didn't work harder on a circle of relationship rather than to jump into a war without at least trying to accomplish a peaceful solution. In fighting against what we perceive as the evil in the government, how many innocent men, women and children have we killed? How many more of our soldiers have died compared to the number of people killed in 9/11, and how many came home injured physically and/or emotionally? We as Americans are responsible for their deaths and injuries. How much damage have we inflicted upon the Iraqi people? How much prejudice have we inflicted upon the Muslim people?

I hear so much hate expressed towards the Iraqi people and the Muslim religion, but most of the people don't even consider that these are people just like us but with different traditions and a different way of life. Their religion is not a bad religion, just different from ours. What has given it the bad reputation is our fear because of a few people who have defined the religion to fit their needs. Imagine where the Christian religion would stand if they were judged for the actions of those who had instigated witch hunts, or if we defined all Christians as people like Jim Jones or David Koresh outside of Waco, Texas?

Mack refers to Papa as a Christian, but Papa is quick to say that he isn't a Christian, that the Christian religion was formed by people. The people have formed an hierarchy within the church in order to satisfy their own need of having someone in control. As I said in an earlier blog, he believes that the religions of the world all worship the same God, and that God is Him under different names. This is the same as I believe. We choose our religions to fit our individual needs rather than to have a circle of relationship between all religions and accept other religions as legitimate and basically good.

When people are hurt or being killed, we do need to try to stop these atrocities, but before we declare war on anyone, we need to negotiate and work out our differences in a circle of relationship. When people belong to a different religion, we should not tell them they are going to Hell because chances are, they are thinking the same of you. Accept their religion as being right for them and welcome it into your circle of relationships.

In closing, I believe that when one holds power over the other, the other is hurt and held back from being who they really are. Let's let people decide who they really are.

The Shack 2

Today I want to focus on a part of The Shack which deals with the circle of relationship and the hierarchy of power.

Mack asks Papa who is in charge in their group of three. Papa explains to him that there is not a position of power in their relationship. People have a need for someone to be in power and therefore, consider that Papa (God) is the most powerful of the three. In reality, none of them are in power over the others because they have a circle of relationship. Each one of them is a part of the other. They are three in one.

Papa tells Mack that hierarchy is a problem of people. They have taken the idea of hierarchy so far that it exists everywhere; in politics, in business, and even in marriage. When there is a hierarchy, there must be rules which leads to a chain of command and destroys relationships rather than protects them. Relationships are the important things in life, not who has control over others. A person who gains control soon becomes independent rather than in a circle of relationship, and that person looks to take care of himself. But Mack isn't convinced about the problem of hierarchy. He tells Papa that all these rules protect people. Papa points out to him that they also hurt people. Any of us can see that this is true just by looking at Hitler. But even more sad, we see it every day in countries around the world, including our own. Decisions are independently made and executed in order to benefit specific groups rather than for the good of all. The more independent we become, the less we care about how things will affect others, as long as we gain in some way ourselves.

Can we get away from this control of hierarchy and independence? I doubt it. However, we can work to control it. One of the beautiful things concerning the government in the United States is that even though they have a "person in charge" in the President, there are controls over this person through Congress and the powers they have over the President, through states in the form of Senators and Representatives, and right down to each person in the form of elections. Unfortunately, over the past few years, the controls have been limited by the President himself, the Congress by not using their powers, by lobbyists who work for individual organizations using bribery to get what they want, and pork barrel passages put into important bills. The good thing is that the people in the United States are beginning to see how these powers are beginning to hurt the entire country and are screaming for changes. This can be seen by the way elections came out in this year of 2008. Now we can hope that the power of the people as a circle of relationships will help to fix the power of the government.

Another area that I feel choosing independence over relationships has become a danger is in health care. I know that there are many people who fight against having any kind of program that works to give all people health insurance. They are afraid that controls will be put on them as to the insurance they want, the Dr.'s they want to see and the quality of care they will get. I had one person tell me that the government would gain control, taxes would rise and they would be paying for everyone's insurance. I'm not sure that this is true. Right now there are millions of people who have no insurance at all. Because they don't have insurance and Dr.'s won't accept them as patients unless they are paid immediately, people put off getting health care they need. So then what happens? They really get ill and end up in an emergency room of a hospital. That hospital takes care of them for a condition that could have been controlled in a Dr.'s office before it became so expensive, and ends up taking a loss. So where do they make up this difference? They bill insurance companies more for their services, and the insurance company bills their clients more on their premiums. So, who is paying for those uninsured people? You, the insured, are. If every person in the United States had insurance at an affordable price, I think many of the insured people would find their own insurance premiums to be less because there would be more people to contribute to the health care system. As for controls on Dr.'s and hospitals that you can use, that doesn't have to happen. Actually, it exists right now through our insurance companies. Some of them have lists of Dr.'s and hospitals that can be used, and if there is an emergency, they expect you to contact them for approval. If you don't, chances are they will refuse to pay. Then there is also the problem of insurance companies refusing to insure people or putting riders on the policies. If you have had cancer in the past, they put a rider stating they will not cover cancer. This is probably the service the insured person needs the most. People who develop problems soon find their insurance premiums rising. They can't change policies because no other company will take them, so they are now stuck with extremely high premiums or no insurance at all.

This is probably long enough for today. Later I will expand further on this subject and talk about prejudice, war and possibly controls over individual persons.

Happy blogging.

The Shack

A very interesting book to read is The Shack written by Wm. Paul Young. Young's BA Degree is in Religion. The book gives us some great perspective about how God relates to us in this world today.

The book begins with us meeting Mack, alone in his home with an ice storm covering the outside world. Mack goes to the mailbox, not knowing if the mailman will even run the mail in this weather, and what he finds is the beginning of his look at his relationship with God. When he goes to the mailbox, he finds a note from someone who calls himself Papa. No stamp. No return address. The note said that Papa missed him and wanted to meet him at "The Shack". "The Shack" is the place where he found items that belonged to his daughter Missy who was believed to be killed by a serial killer. Mack blamed himself for her death.

On the way back to the house, Mack slips on the ice and is knocked out for a few minutes. He then drags himself back into the house and waits for his wife to come home.

Mack doesn't tell his wife about the note. Instead, he makes arrangements for her and his other kids to take a trip so that he can sneak away to the shack, thinking that whoever wrote the note was the killer and he would finally get revenge. The end of the story is when Missy's body is finally found and put to rest, giving closure to the family. What is between deals with Mack and his relationship with God.

I'm not going to go into detail about what happens in the book. Instead, I will choose some areas that particularly interested me.

When we meet God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit we are surprised, and I found it a bit hard to adjust to, that God was a black woman, Jesus was a man from the Middle East and the Holy Spirit was an Asian woman. Mack found it hard to focus on God, felt very comfortable with Jesus, and felt that the Holy Spirit was elusive. What this section of the book impressed upon me was that God is not found in a particular area, but exists within all people regardless of race, sex or religion. Later, Papa (God, the black woman) talks about how religion conditions His people to believe in certain ways. Aren't we all conditioned to believe in the religion we were raised? Most of us stay with that religion for life, some change to a different religion. All have the freedom to come or go. How can those who have been conditioned in Christianity, or any branch of it, be different from those who are conditioned in Buddhism? The same applies to all religions. Each believes their religion is the one true religion. Which one is the true religion, or is believing in and loving God the one true religion? Young also states that all people who believe in God/Goddess, whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Wiccan or any other religion are worshiping the same God, just in a different form. I've always had a problem when someone told me that a person from another religion would not be saved when I was taught that God loves everyone. Yes, people can make choices. But what about the child who is raised in conditions where he is not exposed to anything but his own religion? Does that mean he will not be saved?

More on The Shack later.

Oscar

Oscar, our weiner dog, had a traumatic experience not long after we got him. We have a basement with an outside entrance. I keep odds and ends and all of my garden canning and supplies in the basement to make more room upstairs for other things. One day I went down to get some canned goods to take upstairs. Unbeknown to me, Oscar followed me into the basement. I grabbed what I wanted and headed back upstairs. Oscar wasn't in the house and I thought he probably was outside running around, so I didn't worry about him. After that I totally forgot about Oscar. He loves to be outside and often lays outside taking in the sunshine. Several hours later I heard Oscar cry out. I went to the door, but no Oscar. I went outside and searched all the buildings and areas where he liked to hang out, but no Oscar. I couldn't hear him crying outside, but every time I went inside, I could hear his cry. Suddenly, it dawned on me. Oscar got shut in the basement! I hurried outside, opened the basement door and Oscar came running out and immediatly wanted in the house.

Poor dog. He won't even consider going into the basement now. The bad thing about the situation is that here in Kansas, we have tornados. And where do you go when there is a tornado warning? The basement. And how do you get your dog into the basement? Well, since it's Oscar, I have to carry him while he trimbles at the thought of going into that deep, dark dungeon.