Why I Was Ready

When I was a small child in a Southern Baptist church in Louisiana, my Sunday School teacher told me, with a perfectly straight face, that Catholics didn’t go to Heaven. She never could explain why. I don’t think she even tried.

My teachers taught me, too, that hell was the fate of anyone who didn’t believe ‘Jesus Christ’ was the Son of God. But, what about people in jungles and out-backs who’d never heard of Jesus? Would they go to hell? How could a God who loved 'His' children consign people to hell in such a scenario?

Meanwhile, back to those Catholics: I had very close friends who were Catholic and I knew they deeply believed in the Divinity of Jesus. So why would they go to hell?

And, if Jesus was the “Son of God” what about me? Didn’t God make me, too?

My questions met with blank stares most of the time—along with a change of subject and a steadily decreasing tendency to call on me in class.

Fairly quickly [while still in elementary school] I solved the Catholic Problem: I recognized the blatant bigotry for what it was and dismissed it.

Then, some years later, I learned that the Southern Baptist Convention splintered off from the American Baptist Church because of a fundamental difference of opinion. The Southern Baptists stated that the practice of slavery was ok. Bringing people to our shores against their wills—tearing families apart, subjecting people to all the cruel practices inherent in the institution, the whole nine yards—were just fine because the 'enlightened Americans' were teaching these ‘savages’ about Christianity and how much God loved them.
And these people had a problem with Catholics?

Still later, I learned other historical facts that did not sit well with me either: The Witch Hunts of Medieval Europe. The Inquisitions that stretched well into the Renaissance Period. The forced conversion of the the Jews to Christianity. The Pogroms. And on and on. Oops.

So, on the fateful day when, wandering around a used bookstore, I picked up a book by Ruth Montgomery [A Search for the Truth] that spoke of a different way of looking at God & Stuff—I was enthralled. I couldn’t put it down.
Here, at last, I could see a way out of the quandary I still carried around with me about the fates of people who didn’t believe in Jesus because they’d never heard of Him. Reincarnation solved that problem neatly, for me. People had more than one chance! Salvation was no longer a case of geography and luck.

Karma explained most if not all of the cruelty I saw down through history as well as all around me in the present day. Grace was present in these concepts, too.
It turns out that being truly sorry about things we’ve done in the past can, in certain circumstances, change the way karma works. It’s complicated and I’m not sure I understand all the dynamics. That’s one of those things that’s simmering on my back burner—maybe I’ll go back and stir that pot one day.

This one example I do understand: Suppose you and I meet in an alley. There is no karma between us, no tie of any kind, but suddenly I get a wild notion and I slice your face open. Karma calls for you to meet me in an alley and give me the slice-&-dice in your turn. In fact, if our souls are young enough, we can go on tit-for-tatting each other --and escalating-- for centuries if we choose to.

But sometimes, something else happens. Many lifetimes have intervened before we get around to balancing this experience. We may even have tried, and failed, several times. But now, we’ve both matured since that first chance meeting. You and I came to an understanding long since about that encounter and I’m really, really sorry for having started the ball rolling.
So, the next time we meet in the alley, someone else is threatening you with a knife. And I have the chance to save you from this person [a colleague who agreed to act as mediator for us.] If I rise to the challenge and risk injury or worse, the slate is wiped clean and balance is restored in that corner of the universe. No one gets cut and no new karma is created.

The rest of the Grace concept is, as I’ve said, still out there awaiting my next attempt to comprehend it. No problem—it’ll be there when I get around to it. :)

Grace Revisited

OK, here we go again:
I’d like to share a case of something that I think MAY have been the Karma/Grace principle at work.
First, allow me to say there was much about parenting her children that I disagreed with my mother about. There was one matter, though, that I could not fault her on: she was a scrupulously careful mother who never put her small children at risk of physical injury. She always made certain that child-gates were in place, that pot handles were turned inward on the stove, never left her toddlers unsupervised, etc. etc. etc.

So, on the afternoon I came home from school and found my mother talking blissfully to my younger brother while she did her ironing, I was stunned. My 2 1/2-year-old brother was sitting in an open window with his back against the window-screen. This was one of those old-fashioned screens that was stapled to a wooden frame and tended to rot around the edges over time—and this one was pretty old. Beneath that window was a 1 3/4 story drop to a concrete walk below.

I was only ten years old and I could see the danger immediately. So why didn’t my mother see it? Yet, here she was standing across the room, looking right at him with a hot iron, an ironing board and a clothes basket between her and her son who could, conceivably, go out that window at any moment.

Again, I was only ten, but I was also aware of something else: my brother was an obstinate brat who had a tendency to challenge me if I told him to do anything. He was, after all, traversing the terrible-two’s [though I didn’t know about that concept at the time.] Still, I did know that he would, almost certainly, stomp his foot at me and shout ‘NO!’ if I told him to get out of that window. And, that would increase the risk.

Add to that the recognition that pointing out to my mother the fact that, ‘We have a problem here,’ would not be a good idea, either. She would likely become defensive and argue with me. My brother might become upset and push against the screen without even meaning to. It would use up valuable time that we might not have. Etc. Etc.

All of these thoughts ran through my mind in much less time than it has taken me to type them here. Almost instantly I knew what I had to do: Drawing as little attention to myself as possible, I walked over to the window-seat and sat down within arm’s length of my brother. I didn’t say a word. I just sat there—tensed like a spring. Sure enough, within a couple of minutes [at least that’s how it seems in retrospect] the screen gave way, my brother lost his balance and went out the window head-first and backward. And I grabbed his ankle and hauled him back in the window.
xxx
Now, this whole scenario may have been one major coincidence. In fact that is exactly how I viewed it [if I thought about it at all—which I very rarely did] until I began to learn about Karma.

As I have thought it through with that concept in mind, though, I’ve come to other conclusions:
The most astonishing part of the situation is the fact that my mother allowed it to happen in the first place. As I’ve said, it was totally out of character for her not to see the danger and tell my brother to get down from there. And she didn’t. Why not?

I guess a second point is the fact that I was, after all, only ten years old. How did I see a danger my mother didn’t see and figure out a way around it?

And, why did I walk into that room at that precise moment, anyway? Almost every other day, I would run into the house, hurl myself upstairs, change my clothes, grab my skates and take off for Jane’s and Mary Dey’s house without a thought for where my mom and brother might be. Why did I change my pattern that day?

I’m sure you see where I’m going here.
Here’s where the speculation begins:
What if there was karma between my brother and me? There often is karma of one sort or another among family members.
[That’s why they come back together—to see if they can work it out this time.]

So, suppose for a moment that, in some previous lifetime, I threw the two-year-old ‘fragment’ who would one day be my brother off a cliff onto a rock and broke his skull. I did it maliciously and on-purpose.

Given the way we chose to work it out, it was likely a long, long time ago and my brother didn’t want to go the route of revenge [if he had he would have thrown me out the window].
So, between us we worked out a scenario, instead, in which I could save him from a similar fate this time around. Our mother had to be included in the plan by 'not seeing' the problem so that I could solve it, myself.

One other thing leads me to think this was Karma: the aftermath. Knowing my mother, she probably went into hysterics after the incident. Almost certainly she came across the room screaming, grabbing my brother and me, crying uncontrollably, the whole nine yards. I remember none of that—although the earlier part of the memory is completely clear in my mind. But, once the karma was complete, the rest was entirely unimportant and I have no recollection of it at all.
xxx
So, what do you think about my conclusions?
And how about you? Do you have any ‘coincidences’ lurking in your past you’d care to share?