In moments of stress, I look for a good book to fall into.
"The" Good Book, the Bible,
was not my go-to, though I did read it from cover to cover one summer, in my early teens.
The Bible kept exhorting us to avoid sins of the flesh, and gluttony was one of them, and my love of food--cakes, cookies, pies in particular--made me a "glutton." I was a terrible sinner, mired in the world of fleshly pleasures (namely, food, because I was sheltered and temptation never came knocking at my door; boys avoided me, so I remained innocent by default for a good many years). But I digress. Stress! When my four sisters were squabbling and making noise, even happy noise, I shut it all out. I retreated into an armchair in a corner with books. Fairy tales, then Zane Grey novels, and whatever books I could get my hands on. Escape! I could tune out any amount of noise and commotion. In college, you woudn't find me studying in the library. Too quiet. At "my" table in the Student Union, the collective roar of voices and footsteps were a necessary "white noise" and an antidote to stress. People, hundreds of people, coming and going from these tables. And me with my books, available to chat over coffee for a while, then back to my studies. I graduated summa cum laude, even though I spent as little time as possible in the library.
Five Minutes Came and Went
And wow, did I ever digress from "moments of stress" and "THE BIBLE" as our go-to.
For six years now I've corresponded with a former felon who turned his life around. And what a life. Like me, who grew up in a rural community in Iowa, with "good Christian parents," but in the early 1970s, he faced a lot more temptations than I ever did. His cousin got him into a lot of trouble, and why not - this cousin was the life of the party, a good looking guy, never a dull moment with him around, and he won boxing matches and anyone would look up to him. This cousin got into drug running and a life of crime, and age 17, my correspondent was in the State Pen along with his cousin.
Where was I at this time? Not even a hundred miles away, in the same wholesome Midwest setting, I was utterly sheltered, steeped in Mom's Bible verses, feeling like a wretched sinner because children were starving in Africa and I was a little bit pudgy (in first grade, a classmate called me a "pot bellied witch," and those words stayed with me for life). My own mother nicknamed me "Moosey" because of the five girls, I alone was the "good eater." They were "picky" eaters and not likely to finish everything on their plate. I'd lick every crumb from my plate. I wasn't obese (honest!), but I was well-fed, and "well-fed" is a phrase you use for hogs and cattle fattening up for the market.
In the past week I read some books that made me realize just how provincial, naive, ignorant, and sheltered I was (and still am). "Methland" by Nick Reding is a journalist's account of a small town in Iowa, not far from where I grew up. I have cousins in the town of Oelwein.
Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town
Based on Reding's four years of reporting in the agricultural town of Oelwein, Iowa, and tracing the connections to the global forces that set the stage for the meth epidemic, Methland offers a vital perspective on a contemporary tragedy. It is a portrait of a community under siege, of the lives that meth has devastated, and of the heroes who continue to fight the war.
But this is a 5-minute freewrite, and I don't even *want to talk about the sordid, sleazy things people do behind closed doors or after midnight.
"Nothing good happens after midnight,"
my sister told her daughters for years. It took 30 years for them to comprehend what she meant by that.
The next book I read earlier this week is so disgusting, I (again) don't want to "go there" or even hint at the depravity of college students on cocaine in the early 1980s. The less attention I give it, the better.
It's set in a town twelve miles from where I grew up. I posted a one-star review but that isn't enough to undo the "moment of stress" (week of stress!) that followed. I cannot unsee the stuff I read, which brings me back to a quote from the Biblical Paul of the Epistles.
Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.
Philippians 4:8-9
It occurs to me that I have been even more sheltered and unaware than I realized. A good Christian upbringing will do that to people. Millions of Americans, Midwesterners in particular, growing up on farms and in small towns with the white church steeple. No exposure to evil. The starving Africans, the Holocaust, Mao's murdered Chinese citizens, wars, the crack whores, the mafia, the inner cities, even pickpockets and thugs - we didn't lock our doors - we didn't expect evil, couldn't even IMAGINE evil. To this day I cannot fathom any human want to do the things so many people do. That Sir Lounge Strip Club book. All these college students...
In my mom's day, Iowa City was a "den of iniquity" and her brother (in the late 1940s) warned her not to go to that college (but do go to college, he said, only she didn't want to bother with all those books).
In my children's day, there were stories of "chicken parties" - a member of our church is a counselor of some sort, and she told me of college kids sitting in a circle, another circle kneeling on the floor going down on the guys in the chair, heads bobbing like chickens eating their grain...no, I'm not going to keep searching online for any citations, but I did get this far:
... a lot of people come to college with very little experience of sex, so these expectations make them feel uncomfortable. There is a reason why so much sex that happens at college is when people are drunk. I would greatly advocate for comprehensive sex education during O week for college students. Inside the sex life of a college student
The things I didn't see
when I was in college!
At the tender age of thirteen, I saw what happened when "good girls" step off the straight and narrow path, like Red Riding Hood, who narrowly escaped the wolf. My oldest sister at 18 worked as a cocktail waitress at the aforementioned Sir Lounge. She passed up the "easy money" from guys trying to solicit her, and it was a lot of money (this is all in her diary, which I've blogged about before). She ended up dead in a ditch.
No wonder I barely ever left the house. Even in college, I never ventured too far from that straight and narrow path. I married a guy who waited for the wedding night (they're not extinct; who knew!). How sheltered, how naive, how innocent we were and still are.
A former "crack whore" who once met my sister at The Sir is now a Born Again, like the ten reformed criminals in Sons of Grace by Mark Hughes. This woman who did all the smarmy things my sister wouldn't do for money is ALIVE after all these years. And she's found Jesus. My correspondent, the former felon, mentioned a great line from a Judge Roy Bean movie: there's no one so righteous as a reformed whore. But I don't feel like talking about this woman who lived when my sister did not.
All week I have been revisiting the old emails about The Sir, the drugs, the life of strippers and assassins.
Julie wanted to experience the world. Others did, and got away with it. My "take away" from her tragic and untimely demise was that "the wages of sin is death," and I entered my teen years knowing I must avoid all that is unseemly. That New Testament line that sounds so much like New Age "Power of Positive Thinking" (or the much older Buddhism) - Meditate on good things. Not evil. (Philippians 4:8-9)
Do not allow dark thoughts into your head. Do not look at seedy, sordid, sinful things.
Prayer (and being washed in the Blood of the Lamb!) is supposed to help with that, or maybe a study of Buddhism and transcendental meditation? Because Dark Thoughts keep finding a way in.
In my ignorant childhood, I did learn that thoughts alone could be sinful. How were we ever to escape this evil? Even a good Christian man, cleansed of his iniquities, couldn't help but sin in his heart!
The time Jimmy Carter was interviewed by Playboy (1976)
Carter admitted to having "looked upon a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something God recognizes I will do -- and I have done it -- and God forgives me for it."
So I've been trying to hammer out my novel Ironwolf, which I wrote in the early 1990s, and it's so stupidly innocent and naive. Then again, most of the women's fiction and classical lit I've ever read has been "wholesome" - there's a new genre out there, thanks to the 50 Shades or erotica books that sell so well, called "Clean Romance." And "Cozy Mysteries" that pull a curtain over the blood and gore, the gritty violence of killing people.
Back to my books. Every day I tell myself to get out of Waverly, out of the 1970s, out of the world Julie walked into and couldn't walk out of alive. And what is the first thing I see on looking for inspirational, hopeful, healing memes online?
Am I alone in thinking this naked girl-angel kneeling in the puddle(?) is more than a little strange? St. Paul wrote all those letters (Colossians, Ephesians, First and Second Timothy), urging his converts to give up their pagan ways. They kept falling back into their sinful ways ("backsliders")the minute Paul's back was turned. Humans just don't seem to be wired for that Straight and Narrow path. I'm thinking too of all the Christian missionaries all the world over, shaming people of other cultures to put more clothes on. "Sins of the flesh" and all. Humanity is weird. That's all I have to say about that.
Stress Stress Stress
Cookies, cakes, casseroles, chips - #ComfortFoods! - that's my go-to in moments of stress.
Excuse me while I hunt up some chocolate.
Thank you, 
,
for the daily freewriting prompts--hard to believe we passed a thousand, then another 200, and still counting!
Day 1214: 5 Minute Freewrite: Tuesday - Prompt: in moments of stress