Early years...

This is my command: Love each other.

John 15:17

It will take some time to get to today as I’m going to go back and write about prior years experiences and memories that have been a part of getting me to Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior.

Once we are current my hope is to journal/blog about my faith journey at least weekly.

 

I was born in Los Angeles, California in the mid 1950’s to Jewish parents. We lived in one spot until I was eight months old then moved to the home I spent the rest of my childhood in. It was an middle class area and from what I remember religion wasn’t much of a prominent factor… race was more so. It was a “white” neighborhood. Something I found out when I befriended an Afro-American girl in elementary school and her parents didn’t think it would be a good idea for her to play at my house after school. This bit of information comes into play a bit later in my teen years.

We celebrated Hanukkah and Christmas, more presents for us so that worked for me! We did Hanukkah with my Dad’s side of the family and Christmas with Mom’s side. We went to temple on the “High Holidays”, which meant twice a year… Passover and Rosh Hashanah. I didn’t like going to temple I think mostly because much of it was in Hebrew and I didn’t understand. Our next door neighbors were Catholic and I would much rather go to church with them then have to go to temple. There were periods in my life where we seemed to be a bit more active in our temples. I vaguely recall some early Sunday school years and confirmation class at fifteen years old. Unfortunately my experience with confirmation studies wasn’t very good and it drove me away from wanting anything to do with religion for a long period of time.

I struggled with the concept of God and once asked my religious teacher, “What is God?” He told me that God can be anything I want. Being a confused rebellious teen I replied with, “peanut butter?” and his response to me was “if that’s what you want your God to be.” At some point prior to being confirmed our class went to a camp. I was talking to the Rabbi at camp and told him that my God was peanut butter. His response to me was, “Well then you aren’t a Jew.” That was about all I needed to hear to convince me that Judaism wasn’t for me. I finished up my studies and was confirmed because this was important to my family… especially my grandparents. In hind sight, I really wanted to know God and some compassionate and understanding adults may have been able to lead me in a better direction… but, this was all part of my path.

From that point forward I saw religion as just one more prejudice in the world… one more thing to pit us against one another. Race was obvious as there wasn’t much we could do about the color of our skin, but religion was less obvious and in my eyes an unnecessary evil. Racial segregation was still something that bothered me. Schools had started the busing in and out of students to integrate the schools and what a mess that was in my eyes. I went to Venice High School, which was naturally integrated so no busing was needed. However, the school was also naturally segregated… all you had to do was drive by at lunch time and you would see the groups of students sitting out eating with others of the same color. During my years there it was rather peaceful, but that wasn’t the norm… this naturally integrated school was known for its student to student racial attacks and that made me so sad.

As far as God went I didn’t think much about Him… I still had lots of confusion and termed myself as an agnostic. I always said I was Jewish by birth and liked some of the tradition, but you weren’t going to get me to go any deeper than that.

These were my early years. My next blog will get into my adult journey… the nudges and knocks over the head that finally brought me to Him.


~Lord, I thank you with all that I am for the road you have had me travel in order to find you. Please keep me focused on what it is you have for me to do today and always. Amen~