…that your ways may be known on earth,
your salvation among all nations.

—Psalm 67:2

After the Niyayobateri men circle the dance ground several times, they stop and stand stone-faced in the center of the shabono with their arrows cocked, gazing up into the darkening sky. This is the moment when they will learn if their Blapoteri hosts will accept them—or shoot them. I think, This could be the 1500s instead of 1969.…

*                *                      *

In Venezuela we mostly fly into Indian country, and today I’m circling over Niyayobateri, a Yanomamo village that lies in a grassy savannah on the Venezuela-Brazil border. Looking down at the donut-shaped shabono with its many lean-to shelters, I watch several children playing in the “donut hole.”

Dan and Diana Shaylor, New Tribes Mission (NTM) workers, live here with their kids. My job is to provide them with transportation and supplies. The Yanomamo depend more and more on the airplane for medical flights and for obtaining trade goods they cannot produce themselves. After I land Danny announces, “They don’t have any lasha fruit, so today we have to go to their old garden to find some. Tomorrow we’re invited to a feast over in Blapoteri.” Lasha is Yanomamo for the delicious peach palm fruit that Spanish-speakers call pejiguau. I decide to sleep here a couple of nights so I can go with them.

Getting the lasha fruit

The next morning we set off into the jungle with several Yanomamo to find some lasha, following the scant traces of a trail. As the path beats backward under our feet, the humidity clings to my skin. We cross rocky streams and climb muddy hills. The people walk barefooted (indeed, bare) with only a cotton string around the waist. Surefooted, confident, they laugh and call back and forth. We walk under huge, sheltering trees—kapok, seje palm (good for making bows) and palo amarillo (good for making dugout canoes). How do they know the way? I smell the pungent aroma of decayed vegetation and realize I’m sweating, and breathing hard. Is this little red fruit worth it?

We break out into a clearing where secondary growth overwhelms the old garden spot, and we find the peach palm trees with the inch-long spines sticking out from their trunks. I ask Danny, “The fruit’s high up under the branches. How will they climb these spiny trunks?”

Danny says, “Watch Enrique.” Enrique machete-chops pieces of sapling into four-foot lengths. Then he takes a vine and lashes two of these together to form an X, places them around the tree trunk and then lashes the other ends together to form a platform. With two sets of these X’s he pulls and pushes himself up the tree, avoiding the deadly spines. He machetes the lasha-bearing stalks, sending them crashing to the jungle floor. Women run to grab them and place them in their wicker baskets.

I’m tired, bored and feeling sort of useless here, so I reach out my hand and lean against a tree. Turns out, it’s a peach-palm tree. I scream when the sharp spines pierce my flesh. A Yanomamo woman drops her basket and spends the next half hour extracting dozens of tiny spines from my hand. As we depart, every man and woman (except me) carries sixty pounds of lasha fruit on their backs in a loosely-woven carrying basket.

Dancing at the feast

We go to the feast that same evening. As the westering sun sinks into the jungle, we walk across the savannah and climb the small hill to Blapoteri (named after “Blapo” [Paul], another NTM worker). Danny explains, “The people have hunted for several days and have shot a monkey, several birds, and a tapir. Now they’re getting ready for the feast. Women will cook vegetables, meat, and lasha in big pots over their fires. They’ve gathered lots of stuff—cotton string, bows and arrows, dogs, beaded aprons. They’ve brought in other stuff from the outside—machetes, axe heads, aluminum pots, and Yekuana hammocks. They’ll trade these with the Niyayobateri people.”

As we approach the shabono, I feel close to the beating heart of the village, a living, breathing thing. We pass the Niyayobateri guests who have stopped several hundred yards from the shabono. A man is inserts parrot-feather earplugs into his ears; another paints his face with red ochre. I smell the hot air, heavy with perspiration. Danny whistles an alert that we are friends and not enemies.

We walk ahead, duck our heads, and enter through a break in the shabono’s outer wall. Three men squat before a bark canoe where they’re stripping bananas and mashing them into a bark trough. The village headman comes forward and offers hammocks for us to recline while we await the feast. People seem nervous. Feasts offer great hospitality but also provide opportunity to hurl accusations of stinginess or wife stealing. A feast can erupt any time into arguments, chest-beating contests, head beating with ten-foot poles, or even fights with machetes and bows and arrows. People can get killed.

Suddenly a woman bursts through one of the narrow openings in the outer wall. Danny whispers, “Look—here come the Niyayobateri people.” The incoming dancer wears body paint, decorative leaves in her earlobes, and a cotton cord around her waist. Her breasts bounce up and down as she stomps back and forth and then circles the dancing ground, all the while shaking two large palm fronds.

Several more women run in, their palm branches undulating. The Blapoteri hosts roar as they encourage, exclaim, and comment on the dancers’ physical attributes. “Isn’t that my cousin’s niece? She sure has gotten fatter. See her body paint. Look how she stomps!”

Then the Niyayobateri headman dances in, resplendent in black and red body paint with white turkey down sprinkled in his hair. He prances back and forth as he circles the dance ground with his bow and arrows held across his chest and his arrowpoint case bouncing up and down on his back. His weapons form part of his costume, but they’re always at the ready if the party sours. He has pierced his ears with red and yellow macaw-feather earplugs, and set off his biceps with tightly wrapped cotton strings. A cord around his loins holds up the foreskin of his penis. He stops, arches his chest and makes several pelvic thrusts as he clacks his bow and arrows together. Tobacco juice dribbles from the corners of his mouth.

Now the visiting men group in the center of the dancing ground and stand stone still, gaze up at the sky, and wait. Will their hosts accept them? The hosts lie still in their hammocks, eyes dustbowl flat. A thunderous silence. I shiver, searching the perimeter for any tremor of danger.

After a few minutes (it seems like an hour), several hosts rise and walk out to the guests shouting “shodi” (brother-in-law), and invite them to recline in hammocks near the cooking fires. I sense we’ve slenderly avoided a confrontation.

As day darkens and shadows stretch across the shabono, we sit in our hammocks under the palm-leaf roof and gaze out at the empty dance ground. No inner walls separate the individual families, whose hammocks hang around each cooking fire. As Robert Frost wrote, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” Families use stout saplings and woven palm leaves, building lean-to’s next to each other to form a protective shield against their enemies. I smell the smoke that rises from the cooking fires. Our Blapoteri hosts bring us lasha, along with roasted tapir meat on a banana leaf (it tastes something like pork) and their women bring us gourd bowls filled with banana soup and a dollop of cooked yucca root. I swill down the soup, taste the yucca, and relish the fat-laden tapir meat. You can feel the tension—like the excitement of waiting for the first pitch of a baseball game.

We relax and eat in the smell of dust and tobacco smoke. Nataniel, muscular and a good hunter, comes forward as an honored guest. He has a special gift to distribute among his friends. As he walks across the dancing ground, he carries over his shoulder a severed tapir’s head, snout down. Like most Yanomamo men, he stands just over five feet tall, with his bronze skin and thick, straight, ebony hair hanging down in great shocks. White circles and stripes punctuate his black body paint. A shaved four-inch circle on the crown of his head sets off his scar-topography, the result of head-clubbing fights. He wears monkey tail armbands and a penis string.

Drinking the bones

After the feast, I watch the two headmen, host and guest, squatting on their haunches facing each other in typical Yanomamo fashion, squaring off, chanting in singsong voices. Danny says, “They’re wayoumouing—sharing information and going over old disputes.” The missionaries have struggled to understand the Yanomamo language, filled as it is with nasalized phonemes. (For instance, for the foreigner, the word Yanomamo is best pronounced while holding your nose.) The big chaw of tobacco that men and many women carry in their lower lip makes learning the language even more difficult. As the headmen chant, Danny says, “These wayoumos are important. If they don’t settle their disputes, the two groups might begin chest beating or head clubbing—somebody could get killed.”

Then Danny points to a small group of people gathered on the opposite side of the shabono. “They’re drinking the bones now; let’s go over.” As we walk up, Nataniel sits in the middle of a circle of relatives and allies, and weeps as he rubs a small gourd. Danny tells me, “Raiders killed his brother a few months ago, and the gourd holds the victim’s pulverized bones mixed with water.

People share the gourd around, take a sip from it, and pass it on, crying and murmuring, “Octavio, Octavio.” Yanomamo names are personal, and any other time, speaking the name out loud might invite swift retaliation from a relative. But the bone-drinking ceremony is special, since these “communion services” honor the dead person’s memory, provide an outlet for grief and stoke anger against the killers, anger that often provokes a retaliatory raid.

After two hours, the moon, with upturned horns, rises over the thatched roofs. Danny and I get up and prepare to leave the feast. The Niyayobateri will dance, feast, and talk far into the night before they turn homeward to their own shabono across the valley.

I’m back in the airplane now, flying the 2-1/2 hours back home to Puerto Ayacucho. I think about all the Indian groups, all the village airstrips, in this vast Amazonas territory—Coshilowateri, Mayubateri, Yuwana, Caño Panare, Tama Tama, Ocamo, San Juan Manapiare. I pray silently: Lord, the Christian faith seems foreign, imported, alien to everything these people experience. I have my doubts that Christianity will penetrate this Yanomamo world of warfare and vengeful spirits.

I am wrong.

      *                      *                      *

Fast-forward to 1999. I’m sitting in a church in Bloomington, Minnesota, where Bautista, an old Yanomamo friend, is the visiting speaker. This is the same man whose faith I had doubted forty years earlier. He talks about the encounter between his hekura spirits and Yai Pada (God). His Jesus-encounter transformed him so much that people nicknamed him “Doesn’t Grab Women,” an unusual name for a Yanomamo man! Bautista is the headman of his village, and has led his people out of warfare into peace. He’s a great man and a faithful Christian. Years earlier, I had sat at the Blapoteri feast a skeptic, but today I believe. The Yanomamo Christians have greatly reduced fights and murders, and they have the Bible in their own Yanomamo language, which they are learning to read. I now realize that the light of the gospel can extend to all people—even the Yanomamo.

“Mom, I’m bored. What can I do?”

The clock nibbles away at the afternoon. It’s Sunday and I’m a fidgety ten-year-old sitting on our living room couch. We Fundamentalists embrace a strict set of biblical doctrines, and a list of forbidden “worldly” practices—practices especially prohibited on Sundays. I can’t go to the movies or read the newspaper. Can’t ride my bike out of the neighborhood.

“Why don’t you work on your Bible memory verses?”

I decide to give it a try. I find my yellow cardboard Velveeta cheese box and riffle through the dozens of little square cards. I’ve written a verse on one side with its reference on the back. Fundamentalists take the Bible seriously, and this box is my own idea. I’ve memorized perhaps 100 cards, and I’m working on more.

But I soon lose interest. “Mom, what else can I do?”

“Why don’t you read your King Arthur book?”

I find the big hardback, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. I love the pathos of the wounded knights that crimson the grassy sward, with a beautiful maiden trying to staunch the flow. I wonder if I would have the courage to do the great deeds they did. Probably not.

“I’ve already read most of it.”

“Well, why don’t you play in the orange grove?”

We kids would spend hours running between the orange trees; building living spaces underneath the thick branches; creating lakes, islands, dams, and rushing rivers with the irrigation water. Orange fights were the most fun. We had one rule—don’t use hard oranges, only rotten ones lying on the ground. Mother discouraged orange fights, but we waged many illicit wars.

“It’s too hot. Besides, there’s no one to play with.” On Sundays, my parents discouraged me from playing with my neighbor, Jerry. My sister Virginia was visiting a friend. Mary was playing with her dolls.

Mother lays her dishtowel down. “Why don’t we play Authors in the breakfast nook?”

I tell her, “I’ll get the cards!” I love this game. They’re still in the original box that has a colored picture of Mark Twain on it.

We shoehorn ourselves into the tiny breakfast nook that protrudes from the front of our kitchen. With a bench on each side of an oilcloth-covered table, our whole family squeezes in here to eat all of our meals. The pale green board-and-batten walls are punctuated with two screened windows that open onto the small front lawn. I look out and see sparrows rising in random gusts above the bird feeder.

I dump the cards out, shuffle them, deal four each to Mother and me, and put the rest in the draw pile. A Massachusetts clergyman’s daughter, Anne Abbott, created the Authors game at the beginning of the Civil War. Each card has a color picture of a famous author, such as Louisa May Alcott, James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

I look at my cards. One has Mark Twain’s picture and the title The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. At the bottom appear three additional titles by the same author: Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and The Pauper, and The Mysterious Stranger. Each title evokes a world. Who was Tom Sawyer? Why did the prince hang out with a poor boy? Who could the stranger be? I long to share these adventures.

I need to collect all four Mark Twain cards. “Mom, do you have Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain?” (Mother always insists we name the author when we ask for the card.)

Mother says, “No, but do you have Crossing the Bar by Alfred Lord Tennyson?”

I reluctantly hand over the card. She hands me a plate of sugar cookies. I help myself to a couple and wash them down with lemonade squeezed from real lemons. Then she asks, “Do you have Idylls of the King by him?”

“No. Do you have The Tempest by William Shakespeare?”

“No. Do you have Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens?”

“Yes.”

When all the cards are played, we each count the complete four-card sets we’ve collected. She has five sets. I win with eight.

When I was ten, I’d never read any of these Authors books, but the mere titles conjured up vast worlds to explore. When I later encountered these books in high school and college, they seemed like familiar friends.

I never dreamed that playing cards with Mother would give me such a rich gift. Simple game, but Mother used it to suck me into her love of literature—a love I’ve cherished all my life.

I landed the mission Cessna 180 at Corozalito and walked into the tiny grass-roof house where Wycliffe Bible Translators Florence Gridell and Mariana Slocum lived and worked. A small Chol Indian woman followed me in, laid her precious newborn baby girl on a rough wooden table, and cried out for Florence—“Doña Florencia; ayùdame, por el amor de Diòs! (Florence, help me, for the love of God!)” Florence took the baby in her arms but it was too late—after a few minutes the baby stopped breathing. It was 1968.

The woman wrapped up her precious bundle. When we walked outside I felt the heat and smelled the steaming jungle with its rotting vegetation. Florence told me, “We need to get to Mexico City. If you can fly us out to the highway at Salto, we’ll arrive just in time to catch the bus up to the capital.”

I agreed, and grabbed my spring scale to weigh up the women’s baggage. I told her, “With this heat and humidity we can’t carry more than 200 kilos.  I’ll have to take Mariana and the baggage out to Salto, then return to pick you up.”

Mariana and I climbed aboard the plane, and I taxied out to the end of the 300-meter airstrip hacked out of the jungle with the help of the Chol Indians. We took off, and at best angle of climb barely cleared the treetops at the end. Then I made a fateful decision. “Mariana, I think we should go back and pick up Florence.” I reasoned that we would save time by making only one flight to Salto rather than two. So I circled back and landed the second time in Corozalito.

Florence boarded, and we taxied to the end of the airstrip. She told us, “The mother already took her dead baby back to the village,” I thought about Florence and Mariana—fifty-ish, unpretentious, always wearing blouses and skirts (never pants), dedicated to the Chol people all around them. Every day they passed out pills, taught health classes, delivered Chol babies, and buried the dead. I thought about their brave work, thankful that Mission Aviation Fellowship could provide them air service.

For this second takeoff, I got out and pushed the tail of the plane back into the weeds so I could use every inch of the airstrip. The relentless sun rose hotter and hotter, and I felt sweat running down my spine. I noticed I was breathing heavily and my clammy hand clung to the throttle. Did I make the right decision? Do we have enough margin of safety? A little proud and overconfident, I hesitated to change my mind again.

I applied full power, released brakes, and the plane hurtled down the airstrip. We accelerated well, and as we rotated I willed the airplane into a climb. The engine sucked in the hot, humid air, doing its best. The trees loomed larger and larger.

Soon the highest tree branches filled the windshield—then we shot over them.

After flying the ten minutes to Salto, I unloaded the passengers and cargo and then checked the landing gear, half expecting to find twigs or pine needles caught in the wheel struts. I took off with a troubled mind and flew home to the MAF base in San Cristobal.

That evening, I scoured the inscape of my mind, wondering why I had talked myself into making that second takeoff with no margin of safety, a takeoff that jeopardized precious lives, all just to save twenty minutes. Instead of listening to the voice of my better angel, I had made a poor decision.

I said a humbled prayer—“Thank you God that yet again you refused to give me the consequences I deserved.” Mercy.

“Spreading your wings in a perplexing world”
October, 2016                                                                                        James Hurd      

CONTENTS

• New blog article: “A little rebellion in 100 words”
• Writer’s Corner
• Book reviews
• E-zine subscription information
• How to purchase Wingspread: Of Faith and Flying
• Quotable quotes

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NEW BLOG ARTICLE: “A little rebellion in 100 words”

 Every weekday I would drive my immaculate metallic gold 1953 Ford—dual chrome pipes, nosed, decked, and hung—into Orange High School’s dusty, potholed, student parking lot. It got dirty….  Read more here:  https://jimhurd.com/2016/10/11/a-little-rebellion-in-100-words/ 

(*Request: Please share with others, and leave a comment on the website after reading the article. Thanks.)

 WRITER’S CORNER

Writer of the Month: David McCullough. (Truman; John Adams; 1776) He is recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Great background research on his historical biographies and great detail.

Word of the Month:   Movie-making. Highlight all the parts of your piece that you could make a movie of. (I’ve actually used a highlighter to do this.) This is what gives the piece life, keeps it moving, and this should constitute at least fifty percent of the piece.

Farther vs. further. Farther: use only for distance. Further: use for “in addition” or in the sense of extending. “Further, I propose we seek a location farther from home.”

Quiz of the Month: What is wrong with these sentences? (Answers next month)

• Jake said, “I’m going out on the back porch to rest a while.”
• For some people it always takes more friends, less enemies, more excitement, more money, and more renown, whatever else it might take, to make them happier.
• We had a great day, it was unforgettable.
• The dog’s wound laid bare it’s internal organs.

Tip of the Month: Where do you put stuff? First, don’t put the beginning of your story at the beginning. Start it just before or just after the climax; then go back and provide the context. Keep the narrative flowing. Second, if you must provide lots of backstory (explanatory detail), sprinkle it in small doses amidst the driving narrative. Third, don’t tell your reader any more than she needs to know. Last, save the best paragraph, the best sentence, for the end.

BOOK REVIEWS

Lorraine Eitel and others. The Treasure of Christian Poetry. Fleming H. Revell: New Jersey. 1982. A compilation of some of the best Christian poetry in English from the Middle Ages through the 20th century. Includes poems by: William Wordsworth, John Milton, George Herbert, Christina Rossetti, Robert Browning, C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, and many others. My favorite compilation of Christian poetry. (Disclaimer: All the editors taught at Bethel University.)

David McCullough. The Wright Brothers. Simon & Schuster, 2015. The dramatic story of the courageous brothers who solved the problem of flight. Historic photos.

SUBSCRIBE FREE to this E-zine   Click here https://jimhurd.com/home/  to subscribe to Wingspread  E-magazine sent direct to your email inbox, every month. You will receive a free article for subscribing. Please share this URL with interested friends, “like” it on Facebook, retweet on Twitter, etc.

BUY JAMES HURD’S WINGSPREAD: A Memoir of Faith and Flying.  How childhood (Fundamentalist) faith led to mission bush-piloting in South America—and Barbara. Buy it here:  https://jimhurd.com/home/    (or at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, etc.)

See pics here related to Wingspread: Of Faith and Flying: http://www.pinterest.com/hurd1149/wingspread-of-faith-and-flying/

 QUOTABLE QUOTES

♠    I was always taught to respect my elders. It’s just getting harder to find them.

♠    Just one question for teachers: Would you enjoy being a student in the class you teach?

♠    Murder, considered a crime when people commit it singly, is transformed into a virtue when they do it en masse.   Cyprian, 3rd African Bishop

♠    Remember, God’s will was for John to be exiled, Paul to be jailed, Jesus to be executed. Why do we assume God’s will for us is to have a great job, a happy life, and a large bank account?

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Follow “james hurd” on Facebook, or “@hurdjp” on Twitter

If you wish to unsubscribe from this Wingspread E-zine, send an email to hurd@usfamily.net and say in the subject line: “unsubscribe.” (I won’t feel bad, promise!) Thanks.

It was 1950, and for our family, Sundays were different than weekdays. We were Fundamentalists—conservative, baptistic, churchgoers who took the Bible literally and eschewed the outside world. Without question or debate, every Sunday we went to church. Our house had only one bathroom, so we boys had to get in there before 7:00 a.m., jump in fast and then jump out. Dad lit the gas flame on the water heater about one-half hour before bath time. I filled up the tub and lay there steamy and soaking, ignoring my sisters banging on the bathroom door—“Jamie; are you done? We need to get in there!”

Mother said, “When the water heater gets hot, be sure to turn it off so it won’t explode.” I gazed at my young self in the huge vertical mirror that hung opposite the sink, and harbored visions of flying shrapnel bloodying my naked body.

We always dressed up. Mother would put on a black hat with a black ribbon and half veil, black low-heeled shoes, and always dark hose (no shaved legs.) I think the hat and veil were a hangover from pre-war customs, because women under 40 never wore them. Mom and the girls always wore dresses well below the knee. Even in summer Dad wore a suit, white shirt, and tie. He was president of the county-wide Christian Evangelism organization, and on his lapel he always wore his cross-and-crown CE pin. I usually wore a collar shirt, slacks, brown shoes, and a little brown sports coat with matching pen and pencil in the pocket.

We drove to church in our black 1939 fastback Ford, a car which Dad bought just after World War II. Mom carried Mary in her arms while Dad drove. Virginia and I sat in the back seat, or sometimes I stood on the front bench seat between Mom and Dad. No seatbelts or child seats. We drove eight miles to church—down Cambridge, turn right at Fairhaven, cross the tracks and go south on Santa Clara to 17^th Street, west on 17^th Street to Edinger Street, then left. We parked near the little white church with its squat bell tower sitting on a sandy lot. It had no air conditioning. Knotty pine walls lined the auditorium, and in both corners above the platform, Scripture verses were painted on white boards. “He that hath the Son hath life…” I memorized them.

Sunday at Silver Acres Church was an extended affair. Opening Exercises started in the auditorium (we never called it a sanctuary). Age-graded Sunday school followed—Sunday school was big at Silver Acres. I sat in Mrs. Wallace’s class, fascinated. She would place the cloth figures on her “flannelgraph” board: “Here is Jesus, and here is Peter and John getting into the boat.” Then we went back to the auditorium for Closing Exercises.

After a short break the church service began with Pop McIntosh up front in his suspenders, leading the singing and waving his arms to keep time. Brother Cantrell’s 40 minute sermon, the morning’s highlight, always came last. He used to say, “Sermonettes make Christianettes,” and, “If you’re looking for a church to join, we are Fundamentalist, Bible-believing, independent, unaffiliated, non-denominational, pre-Tribulational, and pre-Millennial.” I thought, If you understand all that, you deserve to be baptized!

Most Silver Acres men worked blue collar. Dad carpentered for forty years, Ben was a mechanic, Cliff sold lumber, Earl ran a gas station, and Mr. Zanstra milked dairy cows. Regular, unpretentious, Godly people. They and their wives became my surrogate uncles and aunts.

Purity—that’s what we were after. The liberal theology of “Modernist” churches alarmed us, along with the general decay of American morality that began in the 1920s. Brother Cantrell said, “You need to live a life separated from both the polluted world and from the Modernists.” Modernists, which included Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Episcopals, had different doctrines and they didn’t believe in inerrancy.  Brother Cantrell warned us against Modernists such as Norman Vincent Peale and Harry Emerson Fosdick. He taught passionately about the virgin birth, atonement, pre-tribulational rapture, and inerrancy—arcane doctrines I learned thoroughly by the time I was ten. And his certainty fired us up—the Bible was self-explanatory, and its teachings were fixed for the ages. It contained doctrine you could take to the bank.

 After church ended, we would drive home to a huge meal. Although we rarely ate rich meat, I never suspected we were poor. On weekdays we would eat hamburger and “organ meats”— tongue, heart, or liver. But Sundays were special. We ate roast beef and potatoes, green beans, and sliced tomatoes, with ice cream for dessert.

On Sunday afternoons, peace reigned. Dad would take a nap. No playing in the neighborhood. No radio. We couldn’t read The Santa Ana Register. We were never allowed to go to the movies. No friends over, unless they were Silver Acres friends. No weekend trips away. Once my friend Jerry asked me, “Wanna go on a camping trip with us?” I asked Mom. She said “You can’t go because it’s over Sunday.” Jerry went to a Modernist church (Methodist).

We did play some in the two and a half acres of orange grove behind our house—pulling a wagon up and down the rows or organizing illicit orange fights. Back in the house we read, played checkers, or played Christian music on the Victrola (a wind-up phonograph player with big 78 RPM records). I read Power, a take-home pamphlet from church. Sunday afternoons were quiet, peaceful, home- and family-based. I read good books and learned lots of Bible verses.

After supper we all piled back into the Ford and drove to church for “evening services.” Pop McIntosh led singing—Power in the Blood, At Calvary, The Old Rugged Cross, Jesus Saves; plus Gospel choruses—I’ve Got a Home in Gloryland, Deep and Wide, and Do Lord. I loved these songs and knew them by heart. Dad and I played our clarinets in the church band. I hoped that my platform performance impressed Linda, who sat in the front row.

Our family was a little island, separated from our non-Fundamentalist neighbors. The unworldliness of Fundamentalism turned me in toward family friends and family values, kept me home-centered, secure, and it kept me from the world. As I grew up Fundamentalist, I felt a strong foundation under my feet, a circle of people that cared about me, a set of sturdy, Bible-based beliefs that inspired me. I felt part of a larger family that cared for and protected me. I got saved when I turned five and baptized when I was twelve.

Today, I hope I’ve rejected the narrowness, intolerance, and holier-than-thou attitudes I acquired in my childhood. I try to embrace a more generous orthodoxy that makes room for Modernists, Catholics, and others.

And yet I still feel like a dried-out drunk at an AA meeting—“Hello. I’m James, and [it’s like confessing a sin] I’m still [sort of] a Fundamentalist.”

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us
Robert Burns

You’re kidding yourself! No, really–you are. What are you going to do about it?

 In self-deception you’re both the deceiver and the deceived—you talk yourself into a lie. But SD is so frequent  you don’t even notice it.

Examples abound. I tell myself I can indulge my lust and still have high morals. Although I’m all for good nutrition, I tell myself it’s OK to eat lots of sugars and fats. (Anyway, next week I’ll start my diet.) When I was a pilot, I convinced myself I could beat the odds and fly through bad weather–a practice I condemned in other pilots.

St. Paul feels my pain: “…what I do is not the good I want to do.” (Rom 7:19). Vintage SD—no big deal, really—except when it leads to disaster. In dating, SD can lead to sexual immorality and a broken heart. In nutrition, SD can lead to frail health and an early death. In aviation, SD can lead to a fatal accident.

Where does SD come from? It comes from my split will. My “will” is not single; it’s more like a food fight among dysfunctional members of a board. The voices of reason get out-shouted by the short-sighted members who favor easy-feel-good over hard-but-better.

What to do?

• I need to tell myself the truth, to admit that I’m a sucker for SD.
• I need faithful people around me to correct and warn me (for example, an accountability group).
• I need to remember: God is true; I’m not.

As St. Paul says, “…the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2). Not my SD “truth,” but God’s.