Jonathots Daily Blog
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When people control your food, water, hygiene, play and sleep, you learn to believe what they say–or spend a lot of time in your room without supper.
On May 8, 1965, I was thirteen years old and still a novice at any form of teenage rebellion. So when the church men decided to go to the mountains of Oklahoma for a meeting of all-male types–three thousand in attendance–to hear nothing but gospel preaching and gospel singing for a whole week, sitting on hard, knotty pine benches with a big knot just beneath my butt crack, I was compelled by those who controlled my supplies, to go.
It ended up being a week of firsts:
- It was the first time I ever went skinny dipping in an ice-cold mountain creek.
- It was the first time I heard that Martin Luther King, Jr., was a Communist and a womanizer.
- The first time I had s’mores made with miniature marshmallows.
- The first time I heard proclaimed aloud that Jews and Arabs were going to hell.
- The first time I got poison sumac on my bum (thus the origin of “bummer,” I would assume).
- And it was the first time I heard the word “nigger” used as a universal, collective pronoun, describing a group of people I didn’t understand and I suspect the speakers had little knowledge of, either.
The rally was forceful. It was intense. It was a meeting that peaked at times in jubilance. It was full of “god-talk.” It was permeated with self-righteousness.
And it was child abuse.
Because I needed …
Well, I needed tenderness. Instead, they gave me large doses of macho.
I needed an open mind. They worked very hard to seal mine shut.
God, I was desperate to know about girls. They proclaimed that women should “submit.”
Some laughter would have been nice. They reserved giggling for the older men around the campfire after they thought we young’uns were asleep.
And of course, I needed a world view. They provided God’s 40 acres.
After I got home and healed of my poison sumac, I started to think for myself. Yes, in my own simple way, I began to rebel.
I have never stopped.
I am still a warrior against anyone who has constructed a box for God … and wants the sheep to come passively, and worship.
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