Up on the Mountain

We were living up on Mt Hood in the little community of Zigzag.  Yes there really is such a place. The atmosphere up there was as weird as we were which was no surprise.

I never will forget the night that we found the house that we ended renting. It was in the early fall of 1987. Joani and I and had packed up our Suburban with an air mattress, cooler and a grill. We grabbed our Golden Retriever Riley, and headed out to tour Oregon. We had an incredible time. Since I made my living on the black market we chose time as if it was our own.

Somehow we wound up in Zigzag, a little berg about halfway up Mt Hood.  I remember pulling off of Highway 26.  There was a cleared piece of ground about 5 acres or so. We got out of the vehicle, the dog anxious to run and to relieve himself. It was then I looked up into the sky. I will never forget the sky that night! The stars were white and intense against a backdrop of deep purple. It more than amazed me it instantly moved my consciousness back in time 13 years.

I was a teenager in South Carolina; it was the summer of 1974. Those were wild times in the south and particularly wild in John Laney’s life. I was an absolute renegade. God was the farthest thing from mind. I started using pot when I was about thirteen and I had escalated into almost all the other drugs. That night I had taken two hits of LSD. A couple of my friends and I went out to a hayfield that was owned by a relative of mine. The hay was high, about three feet; I looked up into the sky. It felt like I could reach up and touch the stars. The night was alive, the stars white against the super dark sky. I looked across the hayfield as the wind began to blow. Suddenly the hay looked like the waves or the shifting tide of the sea. I lay down and looked up, suddenly everything opened up to me. I can’t explain it except to say that I had an epiphany. I looked up and imagined all the solar systems around the innumerable stars. I looked down at the dirt and I imagined the structure of the molecule, I was taken aback by the similarity. I thought “it looks the same, when you look at the solar system and you look at the molecule, they look the same”. I began to ponder time, space, and eternity. Suddenly I knew that God was real! I not only knew He was real, but at the time I felt that I had a real good handle on how the creation was brought into being. I was elated, on top of the world. My understanding would bring me incredible success.

When I woke up the next morning I could not remember most of the details. “I should have written it down” I told myself!

Now I am not advocating taking drugs to find God. I tried to duplicate the experience and after several attempts it became apparent what I had experienced was a onetime deal.   (I have gotten close in worship though) But that moment on I had a knowing, an awareness, that this system that we call the universe was created by an all powerful, all knowing God.  I don’t understand how something like that can happen. It is hard or impossible to reconcile religiously. I do understand that on that August night in 1974 I began to experience Grace, from that time on I was a believer in some sense of the word.

Even when we did not know Him

When I contemplate life, eternity, theology and grace a pattern appears. I see how an all powerful God has intervened; nudging gently directing, even dramatically performing miracles in my life and the lives of others. The kindness of God is incomprehensible. When I look at the fabric of life it amazes me at the intricacies of the pattern, what a tapestry!

This writing is definitely positioned from my “Amateur point of view”. I am not a professional writer. I hope that I don’t ramble to the point of confusion.

I realized yesterday that I have spent most of my life trying to please my father. I just never could seem to catch his full attention and I was never able to perform quite up to his expectations. I learned this through a painful process. I had a meeting with a businessman who is a “father figure” to me. As I talked to him (trying to gain his approval) telling him of an endeavor that I am embarking on, he pulled out his sword and stabbed me right in the heart. It hurt.

Now after twenty two years of Christianity I am finally realizing that my heavenly Father is flawless, and that He is truly pleased with me. Imperfection can never measure up and be like Him, but our goal is to try, and to rely on Christ. As a son my desire is to express His love to you. I don’t know how to do that except from the first person. Please forgive me if anything that I say seems selfish of prideful. I know that God does not love me more than He loves you. I also know that I am not more important than you.  The only way that I can come close to expressing this unending love that I have experienced is from my own point of view.

Back to the story

Joani and I were in Pasco because her grandmother was ill. She was really sick and we all thought that she was going to die. At one point I went to the hospital and read her the 23^rd Psalm. Her room was on the end of a wing and an exit door was really close. I was really nuts; I had been engaged in some real heavy spiritualism for a long time. (I will tell more about that later) In my mind she was not supposed to die in that hospital room. I concocted a plan to take her out of there and to the high desert. I wanted her spirit to be free and not confined to this awful place. The next day I got my Indian blanket. I drove my Suburban to the hospital and parked by the exit door. I entered the hospital through the front door and made my way to her room. I walked in the room and was surprised to find a different woman. In the bed was a lady who must have weighed 300 pounds!

Dismayed I went to the nurses’ station.   I found out that they had moved her to the very center of the hospital! There was no way I could get her out from here. Talk about grace! I would probably still be in jail, as I was intent on doing the deed. I am sure the family would not have understood, much less the authorities.

Soon after Joani showed up grandmother Florence got better. I can’t explain it but it happened. Maybe her heart was longing for her estranged granddaughter and when we showed up she responded. Maybe it was all the Fathers work. I don’t know. But I do know that she suddenly got better. 

The Hook

It was the week after Christmas in 1987. I was an outlaw, and that my friend is a huge understatement. (I will tell the story, but not now it’s too painful)  My soon to be wife Joani Peters and I were in Pasco Washington as her Grandmother had become ill and was in the hospital there. Joani and I were living in “sin” if you could call it that, looking back it all seems like it was part of God’s plan.

I am often amazed at how humanity attempts to do God’s job. How we look at things and judge them. We only see a small part of the picture or as a good friend of mine wrote “We see through a glass darkly”.

Joani came from a much contrasted family. She had an awful childhood. Her parents were serious drinkers who dragged her along. She spent many hours alone in the car while her parents got drunk in the bar. Many time she witnessed her dad in fights either beating someone or getting beat. You get the picture, it was ugly. On the other hand Joani’s grandparents were intense Pentecostal Christians. The loved her and prayed over her. Her memories were mixed with the fear and horror of one life, and of lying on the couch at her grandparent’s house. With the security of her Grandmother Florence stroking her hair and telling her that she was “the apple of God’s eye”.

The year before her Grandfather had passed away, and this had affected Joani. We met soon after, and she often told me that I reminded her of Lowell her grandfather. I don’t know how but she found comfort in it and our relationship seemed to be deepened by that.

Now her grandmother Florence was seriously ill. Joani and I were in Pasco to visit her.  Joani’s aunt and uncle pastored a little Pentecostal Church in Pasco. I was about to learn a wonderful lesson that is engrained in my thinking, and probably one of the cores of my faith. Every person that I had known very well that professed Christianity seemed judgmental and rigid.  There I was trying to do God’s job, because I judged them before I ever knew them. I was in for a surprise.

Glen and Jeannette asked us to go to dinner with them. We met them at the Red Lion in Pasco. It happened to be Friday so I thought that I would impress my religious hosts by ordering fish and wine. My Catholic neighbors had done this and I thought this would be a sign to them that I was “hooked in”.  

At dinner I boldly said to Glenn “I believe in God, I believe in faith healing,” and I did. I had an experience years before that had convinced me of the reality of God, but I will tell about that later. I continued my dialog. “I can’t reconcile Christianity, here you have some man who grew up in a different culture, he may be of a different religion and he is trying his best to serve God, and Christianity says that he is going to hell”. I had struggled with this since I had first contemplated God.  Glenn looked at me. I braced myself for the answer that I had gotten in the past. He replied “That is too big for me” I was shocked as he continued, “only God can judge that, and it’s too big for you John” he continued in what turned out to be one of the best sermons I ever heard. “You need to stop stumbling over that, and respond to God in the way that he is dealing with you.”

I learned that grace comes wearing different clothes. It may come looking like my friend Bill with his long hair and his guitar. Or it may come with its hair in a bun (so tight that it smiles all the time) and a long dress. It may come from religion, and it may come on streets. But this thing that I am convinced of grace is the language of God.

Introduction "From my amateur point of view"

When one of my mentors would talk about God, he would always say "from my amateur point of view".  That resonates with me, because I think that we are all amateurs when it comes to God.  A man can spend much of his life (as I have for the past 22 years) learning the scripture and realize that he really doesn’t know much at all.  The Apostle Paul said that we see through a glass darkly, and I would have to say that is an understatement!  The first words from the Sermon on the Mount “Blessed are the poor in Spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God” would indicate that the key to receiving from that kingdom in the present tense is a sense of humility that recognizes he does not know much at all.

Now I will state my views plainly here, as I tell my story. I am blatantly Christian, but I make some religious people real nervous. They just don’t understand my friendship with God, and that is OK. I don’t understand their religion, but we all share the same thing. We still see through the glass darkly. I am comfortable not knowing it all.

We have an incredible story! It starts out real ugly, and that part will be hard to for me to tell. When I think about it I can still feel the pain of the heartbreak and the disappointments of someone who felt so misunderstood, and ended up hurting the people who loved him. And it may be shameful to some, but not for me. For I am the sum total of my experience, and it took the pain and the shame to bring me to place of grace. That place was in a jail cell and the date was March 13^th 1988.  My story is a story of hope. It is a story that is filled with miracles. Because I have experienced God’s Love and continue to do so, my desire is that you would too experience, the Grace and acceptance that comes from a loving heavenly Father.

 But, the story ends up where I sit as I type. I am a redeemed man and I know it! I have experienced God’s love, and because of that His love pours out of me! It happens in different places and sometimes seemly inopportune times. But I don’t mind, because every time that love oozes out of me it reminds me of what He has done for me!  

Please bear with me as I talk about Grace!