My Grandmothers Legacy.

"Gimmie that old time religion.
gimmie that old time religion.
gimmie that old time religion,
it's good enough for me.

The greatest influence on my life was found in a white, two story house, perched on a hillside in Jacksonville Ohio. My grandparents. Even as a child I knew there was something special about these wonderful, exceptional people, who met, married, raised their family, and died in this small southern Ohio village.
At my Grandmothers knee I learned the true meaning of what it means to believe in a God that says "love thy neighbor" and I watched it practiced in everyday life. Every morning began with family prayer, this prayer time was also practiced, without fail, every night before bedtime. Everyone we knew who was ill or had troubles were prayed for. The president was prayed for, I was prayed for a lot. I guess they thought I needed a lot of help. I probably did.
The men of the family were all hunters, this was the primary source of meat for the table. They started taking me on hunting trips when I was about seven years old. At twelve I was allowed to carry a single shot 410 gauge shotgun or single shot 22 caliber rifle. The rules of the hunt were drilled into my head on every trip. You shoot nothing you do not intend for food. You always know where everyone was located. The safety catch was always on until game was sighted, and most important, thank God for this wonderful land in which we provided for our families. We always skinned and eviscerated our game before returning home.
Our arrival home at Grandmas house was quite an event. All of the women were ready to cut and put into mason jars our bounty. This took place in the basement where rows upon rows of canned meats and vegetables occupied every available inch of wall space. The colors, from the high yellow of peaches, the Green of beans, the red of beets and the deep blue of plums was a delight to see, even for a child. Potatoes in the open bins gave off a deep musky odor that was both unusual and somehow appealing.
The women, working over large pots of boiling water, would sing the songs of praise, surrounded by jars of Certo, large cakes of paraffin, and cases of mason jars that had been used many times over. These, and other volumes of memories occupy my mind when I permit myself to look back on a simpler, harder, but much better time.
The sounds of hate that ring out from our so called religious community today would not have been tolerated by my grandparents generation. God was really in charge, not a minister with a financial or political agenda. The personality cult of the minister whose opinions on everything is highly valued on television talk shows would have been correctly identified as a man who had lost all humility, and considers himself an expert on Gods will.
Scriptures that proclaim, "my ways are not your ways" and 'love thy neighbor" or "all things that were made, were made by him" have been reduced to hating those who celebrate God in a different way. They carry signs that Proclaim "God hates Fags" "Kill abortionists" and fixate on the idea that what we believe is justification for any kind of perversion the want to inflict on another society..
How sad this self obsessed, spoiled society has become. Grandma would be ashamed of you.