Lynne’s Spiritual Journey taken from a July 14, 2000 email

He, Mom, remember that time when we all went camping in Oak Creek Canyon.  We girls were horsing around in a little lake and a crazy man stood on a little hill above the lake  hollerin' at us to "Git outta mah watern' hole"? He had a stick in his hand that looked like a gun that he thrust in in the air with every word.  “Git outta mah watern’ hole!”  I'm including that in my timeline where I mark out memorable events in my life when I felt Divine Presence had lifted up, when I was REALLY in the palms of Jesus, my plethora of angels, God and the power of the Spirit. The timeline ends with an arrow because I'm still living my life. And I have many more blessings to add.  Here is what I’ve written so far.

My time line begins with my birth, September 26, 1963.  Both my mother and I were lifted up.  It was a hard labor because I came out butt first and my mother tells me that at one point in the birthing process she died.  She floated painless through a screen of light that flashed peaceful images like flash cards in space, and then she felt herself thrust reluctantly back to reality, screaming, “Noooooooo!” And in that final push I was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck three times. After they untangled me, I let out a scream that she can still hear.  I was further blessed to have been born intoa wonderfully fun and spirit filled family, seven uncles and aunts and what became a couple hundred, well, maybe a hundred cousins, a big fun family that laughed a lot..

In about 1965, I drank Drano.  I don’t remember doing it, but for a long time I had the scars on my tongue to prove it.  Mom was cleaning the bathroom while I was napping.  Because the drain was slow she took out the Drano, and then went to the kitchen to get a spoon.  She heard me scream and ran back to the bathroom.  I had awakened, gone to the bathroom, and decided that Drano might make a good snack.  God was with me because my mother calmly and coolly carried me to the kitchen and poured a glass of vinegar down my throat, followed by a glass of salad oil, gave me a glass of milk and called the doctor.  When she told the doctor what she had done, he said, “Exactly right. A little overboard, but good.  A couple of tablespoons would have done the trick.”  My mother always wondered how she knew what to do. 

Between 1965 and 1968 I got lost many times.  We lived in Metaline, Washington in a housing area called the sheep sheds, old WWII barracks moved into town to provide housing for the dam builders.  Once I wandered to a little lake all the way across town.  All the residents of the sheep sheds were out combing the town for me.  An old fisherman brought me to the grocery store and sat with me until a neighbor found me and took me home.

February 22, 1968, my sister Laura was born.  We were racing down the freeway to the hospital.  Mom was in the back seat, screaming at the top of her lungs and I was SO WORRIED, MY MAMMA'S GONNA DIE!!!!! Turns out, my sister was hankerin' to get out, but she'd given mom so many false alarms, Mom didn't feel ready for the real one,  and now was afraid she'd give birth right there in the car

In April of 1969, I told my Mom, “Can You, Me and Laura go move away somewhere and leave daddy here?”  My father was a schizophrenic and he had been in one of his many tirades.  The next thing I knew my mom, my sister Laura and I were on a Greyhound bus headed for Flagstaff, Arizona. For many years, I felt guilty because I thought the divorce was my fault.    I don't remember that trip too well, but I do remember the dive in down town Los Angeles where we ate burgers while waiting for a bus transfer. It was a pretty scary place, and I got sick and puked all over my Mom. 

The next two years were golden.  We lived in a four generation household, my great-grandmother, my grandparents, my Uncle Layne and Aunt Monica.  Oh, how I loved her. She was 16, a tiny little girl filled with the Holy Spirit. She played a guitar and sang songs of praise all the time.  We had empty lots behind and just north of our house.  I constantly played outside, communing with God, Jesus, The Holy Spirit, in the flowers, the trees, the bugs, the bees, the wind and the trees.  I and my friends left home at dawn and came home for meals. We built forts and played games.  It was golden.

In November of 1973, my mother remarried.  Richard had five children.  First the older two, Brenda and Dean, lived with us, but before long the younger ones came as well: Michelle, Jeanette, and Wayne, and then in 1976 Roark was born.  A gift from God because he became the glue that held us all together.  We all loved him so.  We sometimes called ourselves the Flagstaff Brady Bunch. 

God was also with me one day in 1977. I had just gotten off from work and gone to my Grandma's to pick up my little brother Roark. In those days, believe it or not, we didn’t use car seats and often held a small child on our laps.  I was cruising over Cedar Hill kissing Roark on the top of his precious little head.  All of a sudden, I felt like the surface I was on gave way and realized I'd veered off the road.  We were headed off the shoulder toward the trees. For some reason, I didn't panic, I felt very calm, and before I knew it, we were back on the road.  We both got home safe and sound. I know that if it was just me behind that wheel, neither of us would be here today

During the summer of 1978, my junior year of high school, I felt a deep, spiritual connection with God and the universe while working In the Grand Canyon with the Youth Conservation Corps. We cleared hiking trails, picked up garbage, floated down the Colorado to stop after stop.  It was glorious.  How I wish I'd done that again the NEXT year.  They even ASKED me to be a camp counselor, but pay wasn’t much and I was so bent on making money, that I took a job at A. J. Bayless. It was a depressing summer for me.

It was during that time that I lost my way with the Holy Spirit.  I went to college and then married Marty, a very witty, highly intelligent charmer, but an agnostic.  We moved to Tucson where he began working on his Doctorate in English and I entered the nursing program at the University of Arizona.

In 1988 I was the unfortunate pedestrian in a pedestrian/motor-vehicular collision: I was brought Dead On Arrival (DOA) to the University Medical Center. I spent the next three months in a deep coma, the following six months in a variety of hospitals and nursing homes. The doctors predicted that IF I lived, I would surely be a vegetable on life support.  Well I did live, and after 9 months in hospitals and nursing homes and 3 more months in rehab, and group homes, I finally went home to my loving husband who quickly decided her didn’t want to live with me anymore.

It was a painful experience, but I can now see that it, too, was a blessing.  The condo my mother eventually bought for me abuts a church parking lot, and across that lot at St. Marks Presbyterian I have made many new friends and joined a beautiful church family.  I sing in the choir and play in the bell choir. It is a spirit filled church and they help me to feel whole againl..  They also inspired me to create this time line.

I know there are other events in my life I can and should add because I am blessed each and every day. There has been more than one occasion when I've returned home in the afternoon only to find a skillet left on a burner after having seasoned it that morning. I attribute to Divine Grace the fact that I avoided the many potential dangers that living alone provides and that I survived as well some of my ill-considered intimate relationships.  I praise God that I am STILL the ever-hopeful optimist! I've turned the paper over and extended the line to three more rows on that side of the paper and I will keep Jesus forever in my heart and not fail to record all my blessings.

“God, who began a good work in you, will carry it on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ.” Philippians 1:6

Does anyone care about truth?

January 25, 2010 11:30 PM

As I read the morning news, I often get the feeling that I am living in a parallel universe. News stories often report highly questionable information with no caveat, editors or writers offering not the slightest suggestion that the report may be inaccurate.

So we still get stories that discuss global warming issues as though it were undisputed fact, even after Al Gore's hocky stick theory has been complete decimated, even though NASA itself is attibuting climate change to violent activity of the surface of the sun.
Shouldn't there have been at least a mention or perhaps an explanation or perhaps even a disputation of those e-mails that suggested climate scientists were obfuscating the data on global warming? Why won't Al Gore debate those who have found errors in his "Inconvenient Truth"? Judges in Great Britain forbade the schools there to show the film unless teachers point out to their students the nine pieces of disinformation the film is promulgating.

If the scientists are confident they are right, why not openly debate the disputed issues identified by the producers of the documentary "A Convenient Lie"? I want to believe that scientists really are interested in truth.

I want to believe that members of the media are awake and alert, willing to sort fact from fiction, but they seem to be marching forward in a daze, totally ignoring the controversy, refusing to recognize the naysayers, pretending the controversy doesn't exist.

I am also dazed by the lack of complete reportage about the problems with another issue, the wonderful green energy jobs the federal government is funding. The federal government for example is going to create, huge tax cuts for people who install solar panels. I heard one report on the radio and was stunned by the lack of serious questioning of the implications.

Apparently people can install $500,000 solar systems on their houses for an investment of a mere $50,000. Federal rebates, state rebates, APS rebates, and tax cuts take care of the rest. Shouldn't the public be reminded that the rest of us who probably can't afford to make that $50,000 investment will be expected to pay almost a half a million dollars in fees and taxes and higher energy costs for every unit installed?

More important is the lack of logic with regard to government investments in projects of this sort. Say, for example, that the federal government is willing to pay for 25 percent of the cost of installation of those solar panels. Won't companies take advantage of the largesse and hike their prices accordingly?

Please God, send us someone with courage, wisdom and resolve, April 22, 2011

At a fundraiser yesterday Obama said that Republicans think that successful people like him who "have taken much from this country have no obligation to the less fortunate." He’s wrong.  We do think that people like him who have taken much and produced nothing, DC politicians and hedge fund managers who have exploited the public trough, should give it back.

Politicians began buying votes in the 30’s and boy have they been successful… in getting elected, in maintaining power… and successful as well in exacerbating problems, destroying families, destroying housing markets, undermining the educational system. They’ve managed to buy the votes of the poor, the elderly, the art lovers, the unions, the peanut growers, the people who want to bring back the wolf and subsidize the people whose cattle the wolves have destroyed.  They’ve bought us all, from the poorest to the richest. They even pay unemployment benefits to millionaires.

There are those who are trying to get the wheels of government to resolve problems, but each year the problem gets worse.  The wheel gets heavier. Please, God, send us someone with will and courage, conviction, wisdom and resolve.

President Barak Bartleby, July 16, 2011

James Sefcak (Yuma Sun,  June 15) excoriated us for totally ignoring the fact  that President Obama “has had numerous and very successful accomplishments with his logical agenda”  I am not sure what he means by the president’s “logical agenda,” but’s it’s telling that in 7 column inches Mr. Sefcak was unable to mention one of those accomplishment.

 Mr. Sefcak also commends Obama for his intelligent leadership, a defensible position if you define leadership as watching calmly above the fray. It is patently clear that the Medicare and Medicaid programs are unsustainable.  The problem simply must be addressed.  What is Obama’s proposal?  That we must stop Republicans from killing seniors outright.  His leadership is so lacking that he couldn’t get a budget passed for 2010 when his party had control of both congressional houses. He has a difficult time making decisions.  He voted “present” 129 times as a legislator in Illinois. 

Because their countries were being overrun with refuges, England and France convinced Obama to take on Gadhafi, an action that seems to be diametrically opposed to his own statements regarding international relations.  Nor is he able to get NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) to commit much for either of the missions he has taken on in Afghanistan and Lybia.  Just last week, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates heaped heavy criticism on European nations for their apparent incapability and unwillingness to pull their weight.

And there is no doubt that President Obama is a socialist.  Time magazine has admitted that “We are all socialists now.”  Social Security and Medicare, the two biggest boondoggles at the federal level, are socialistic in both theory and practice. Obama has simply carried socialistic trends one step further setting up government systems to run auto industry and big banks and run the country’s healthcare system.

The more convincing bit of evidence regarding Obama’s gravitas, his leadership potential, was his tenure as Editor of the Harvard Law Review, but the managing editor of the program said that “Obama loved the title,  but he didn’t want to do the work.”  The managing editor said he rarely saw Obama except when it was to “take credit (and praise) for what was being done,” and that Obama never wrote one thing for the review during his tenure, something unheard of.

John Podhoretz said that Obama began his presidency as a potential colossus but he has become the Bartleby the President. He would prefer not to.

Political Discourse, March 18, 2010

I am sorry, Mr. Eugene Robinson, “Tea party rant not harmless” but your editorial bemoaning the violence and the threats of violence on the right is so absurd it set my hair on fire.  You identify several supposed threats, some of which may actually have occurred.  However, did you ever object to even one the thousands of threats, really bloody ones, that were opening demonstrated against our own President Bush.  Actually thousands of posters suggesting he be hanged, at least once by an image of Saddam, one by Bin Laden.  Hundreds burning him in effigy.  Listed below are only a few of the most heinous posters. 

“Kill Bush.  Bomb his f------n house.”

“Hang bush for war crimes.”

“Bush is the disease.  Death is the cure.

“I’m here to kill Bush.  Shoot me.

“Bush.  The only dope worth shooting.

Picture with a bullet hole in his head, blood dripping down his forehead. 

                  “Worst president ever.”

“Death to extremist Christian terrorist pig Bush.”

“Death to worlds #1 terrorist pig.  Bush and his sheep.”

Picture of bushes head with blood dripping from grotesquely from his severed neck. 

A guillotine named the Bush whacker.

Can you imagine the furor if even one such poster depicting violence against Obama appeared at a tea party?  You scorn Sarah for her imagery, but were apparently not disturbed at all that John Kerry suggested we “kill the bird in the White House.”  I go to tea parties.  They are Sunday School picnics.  The only violence you’ll see is the violence of your socialists friends, Mr. Robinson, who try to disrupt our peaceful protests.  Speaker Palosi, was moved to tears remembering the violence of the protestors on the left.  When someone on the right participates in an act of terrorism, we help you prosecute them.  You reward your terrorists with lucrative government jobs. 

The Food Police, April 20, 2011

While eating breakfast at Brownies Café, I read the diet detective, Charles Stuart Platkin’s “Movies that educate you about the foods you eat.” (Yuma Sun, April 20, 2011). It is, of course, important that we be better informed about the foods we eat, but I must take issue with a couple of points.  He lauds “Supersize Me” as a film that shows us how dangerous fast food can be.  The film especially indicts McDonalds, but I think we all know that supersizing anywhere “can make you very sick,”  even at Brownies voted “The Best of Yuma” many years in a row. It’s not so much where we eat, but what we eat.

I was also amused, no, a bit put off, by his comment about the movie “Food, Inc.”  which exposes “the highly mechanized underbelly” of our nation’s food industry and indicts it  for “putting profit before public health.”    People who have never run a business seem to not understand that the aim of business is to make a profit, and that a free enterprise system relies on supply and demand, and then we demonize corporations for giving us what we demand. A viable democracy depends on an informed public.   I think we all know what foods are not good for us.  Perhaps someday I will really learn it, but in the meantime, I will take full responsibility for my personal failings.   

My Struggle with supporting the United Methodist Church, July 5 2011

Pastor Tweetie,

Jean has encouraged me to lead the Outreach program at the church.  In pursuit of that, I decided that I should consider becoming a member, so I began surfing the UMC website.  The article “It’s time for Palestine” in the March 9 issue was a deal breaker.  It broke my heart.   I can no longer support the United Methodist Church.  What is there about the Jewish people that the world hates them so much?  Are we jealous because we know they are God’s chosen people?  The Jews stood alone as they faced the evil of Hitler; they stood alone as they faced the evil of Stalin.  They will not stand alone as they face this present evil.  I stand with Israel.

Since we could not abide living with them, we promised them this little sliver of land, this worthless sliver of land, no oil no natural resources, just a pile of sand, to get them out of our way, to assuage our guilty consciences.  The rest of the British Mandate, the huge oil rich area the size of the United States was left to Islam.  Israel has fought seven wars to keep their land and protect their people.  Perhaps that is why they are so feared and hated, because they managed in all cases to repel the barbarians, once in only 8 days, all the armies of Egypt and Syria and all the Arab states. The Jews must still have God on their side; otherwise they would surely have been overrun by the invading hoards. I stand with Israel.

After they repelled their enemies, Israel captured territories including the entire Sinai Peninsula.  The western world insisted they return the spoils of war in an effort to make peace with their enemies, but there is no peace. Their enemies shoot down their airplanes from the Golan Heights and launch bombs from the West Bank.  Now they must draw back to their 1967 borders? Do we think that then their enemies will be satisfied?  Never.   And how do they defend an 8 mile strip of land?  The airport would be 3 miles from the border. There enemies will not be satisfied until the Jews are pushed into the sea.  I stand with Israel.

Listen to Al Zahhar, the leader of Hamas: “The Jews were brought in in droves so then the Palestinians and the Islamic nations behind them will have the honor of annihilating this gang.  All the predators, all the birds of prey, all the dangerous reptiles and insects and all the bacteria in the world are far less dangerous than Jews.”  Listen to Ahmadinejad:  “The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm.” Listen to the leaders of Hezbollah: “Run the Jews into the sea.  Israel has to wiped off the map.”  “The Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation.”  Listen to al Qaradawi: “I hope that before my life is over I have an opportunity to shoot the enemy, the Jews.” Listen to a sweet little Palestinian grandmother: “Allah, bury Israel and massacre the Jews with your own hands.  Allah willing we will massacre them like we massacred them in Hebron.  We, the people of Hebron, massacred the Jews.  My father massacred them ad brought back some stuff.  Thank you very much.”   

The author of the March article said that Israel was an apartheid nation.  What a stupid thing to say.  Twenty percent of the people who live in Palestine are Muslims, they work and worship and get fine educations and take part in the nation’s political affairs.  Eighty per cent of the Palestinians who are citizens of Israel would not want their country to suffer under Islamic rule.