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*Brian Wilcox. 'A Land of Silence'. Flickr
Today's presentation is the last planned until into next month, as I will be taking time off from writing. Persons are welcome to read past offerings here at Lotus of the Heart. This is a rather long, and an intimate sharing. This is a border crossing writing, as I open up frankly about some matters from the past and have shared when others were involved, only after prayerful silence and receiving peace to be open about such.
I hope you enjoy! And please refer this posting, and others, to persons who might be edified and encouraged through them.
Lightly & Quietly,
Brian K. Wilcox
* * *
Wanderer, your footsteps are
the path, and nothing else;
wanderer, there is no path,
the path is made by walking.
*Antonio Machado
I seem to have been born a border crosser. I was one of three boys, the other two, older by three and four years, like the generations before around the little community Handtown and nearby Hazlehurst, Georgia, stayed around the homeplace. I left, and kept moving. My first move was at age nineteen, to live at a college about forty-five minutes drive away. I lasted less than one day in the dorm. I rushed back home. I commuted for a time. Then, later I reassessed and moved back nearer the college, in a garage apartment. After becoming a part-time pastor of a little Baptist church, in Lyons, Georgia, Hammond Baptist Church, I moved, once more. A church member and widow offered me a room in her house. Well, after nine months of serving these some twenty-five parishioners, I realized I was not ready for being a pastor. I still wanted to enjoy my youth. And, anyway, dear Betty, who seemed to think she was Queen of Hammond, made life rather problematic for a young man who was shy and did not begin to know how to work with church conflict, and part of the conflict that arose is I dared, according to some, to invite a family of dark skin to worship at Hammond Baptist Church; I had assumed, I am glad, that anyone ought to be welcome anywhere persons spoke of it being "God's house." I think what first turned Betty against me, is I did not take romantic interest in her daughter; she had planned we two would hook up. I was a handsome preacher, and I think that appealed to Betty for her attractive daughter, but not to her daughter and not to me. I moved again, back to the college, glad to be free of Betty, glad to be nineteen again.
Since this is not an autobiography, we move on quickly, bypassing many borders crossed over the next years, including the states of Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia. And the journeys brought me much success in education, with two Masters and a PhD., as well as six years as a college professor Yet, there was a dear price to pay for that, a collapse of health amid a spiritual crisis which led from being that professor to working at a nursery watering plants and pulling up weeds, and part-time. If I ever write an autobiography, that will be a good chapter, I think, very, very interesting. Sometimes, for integrity, or to save your life, one may leave his or her religion, for me after my mind and body threatened completely to fall apart. That was a dark place, one you are thankful for having survived, that you come out alive and hope, really hope, never to return to. Yes, there are hells on this Earth, inner hells as well as outer hells. Sometimes, it takes hell for us to be ready to move on.
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