If we stand back from our gift-buying busyness, if we look to the manger, we will see the core message of Christmas which we are to follow: Be humble.
The son of God came to earth as a newborn baby. Why did he come as a helpless baby from a poor family?
Simple humility. The first lesson taught us by Jesus Christ that leads us toward human goodness.
Humility is the tool of human goodness. The opposite of humility is pride. Pride is the tool of evil, causing haughtiness, jealousy, or anger over slights or insults.
Pride is when we worry constantly about what others think of us. When we must be the center of attention, and feel frustrated if we are not. When it is all about us, and not about God and our neighbor, this is pride.
So, how do we grow in humility, and not pride?
This prayer for the virtue of humility has been around a long time, and it is certainly one that I need to pray! It asks for our Lord’s assistance in humbly following in His footsteps and casting aside, or at least offering up to Him, all those nagging doubts and fears that come with our self-centeredness.
Deliver me, Jesus:
From the desire of being loved,
From the desire of being extolled,
From the desire of being honored,
From the desire of being praised,
From the desire of being preferred to others,
From the desire of being consulted,
From the desire of being approved,
From the fear of being humiliated,
From the fear of being despised,
From the fear of suffering rebukes,
From the fear of being calumniated,
From the fear of being forgotten,
From the fear of being ridiculed,
From the fear of being wronged,
From the fear of being suspected,
From the fear that others may be loved more than I.
Grant me the grace to desire: That others may be esteemed more than I, That in the opinion of the world,others may increase and I may decrease, That others may be chosen and I set aside, That others may be praised and I unnoticed, That others may be preferred to me in everything, That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should.
HUMILTY IS SUCH A GIFT. LET’S LIVE IT, AND SHARE IT!!
My husband and I have been married for fifty-six years, so I know a little bit about the subject. Marriage can be viewed through many spectrums: love, of course; sacrifice; commitment; responsibility; patience, forgiveness, and courage. But since I’m a writer, I’ll use the poetic analogy of a boat for the married state. I began the adventure of marriage sailing in one boat with a man I fell in love with. In time, five children took up resident in our boat, as well as thirteen grandchildren plus suitcases of sporadic joys and sorrows, constantly opening and closing. Yet, the vessel never seemed too small for any of us. And even on very wide waters, in sometimes frightening weather, our little boat never stopped its aim for the farthest shore. Looking back, I call that a mystery.
I have asked myself the question: How did my husband and I last through for these fifty-six years? Because there were times. . . .Oh yes, there were times, when each of us may have wanted to ‘get out of the boat’ and be done with the trip, but again, because of some mystery, we remained.
My husband and I met when we were seventeen years old as freshmen at Spring Hill College in Mobile, AL. He was from North Alabama, a transplanted Yankee only a year before. I was a dyed-in-the-wool Southern girl born and raised in South Alabama. He borrowed a pencil from me in Theology class, and broke it. Later he told me he’d broken it purposely so he could stop me after class and give me a verbal apology. We were at once attracted to each other. Who knows why that happens–instant attraction—except it did. And what is that fragile web of affection between a man and a woman that teases by word and touch, by sight and appetite, and fastens two separate souls into one? Well, I call that a mystery, too.
I was an art major, and he was a history major with an eye to Law School. In ways, we were complete opposites. I saw our life together as a painting in progress, a changing of colors from dark to light to brilliant, and sometimes back again to start all over with darkness, requiring a complete and utter gesso of the canvas. He saw it measured against the annals of what succeeds and what doesn’t. He was–and is–the logical foundation. I am a believer in imagination, always wanting to paint things a little brighter. But we are the same when it comes to seeing our marriage as our most important vocation, the vehicle which will take us to heaven. We see our marriage as a sacrament. Another mystery? I think so.
In the original Greek scripture, the word for “mystery” actually meant “sacrament.” The sacrament of marriage was intended to reflect the unremitting love that Christ has for His people, the Church. My husband and I never considered that we could, or would, get out of our Catholic marriage, no matter how many bad times we would go through–and there have been many. In other words, we believe in the mystery and in the sacrament.
Today, the concept of marriage, who and what it’s for, has changed in the eyes of many people who are unwilling to take on the honest commitment that marriage requires. These are spouses– husband and wife, or both–who have been led to believe that “Life is all about ME.” That statement is poison to marriage and family, because it makes marriage as disposable as a paper plate, a sign of our times. Today, many weddings seem to be only expensive occasions to party, and afterwards, the marriage sometimes bears little resemblance to the sacrament of Holy Matrimony as God intended it to be–husband and wife holding on to each other through good and bad times in a vehicle of His grace, helping each other to become the best person each can be.
And if any vocation needs grace to survive, it is surely marriage. Because if we fall out of the marriage boat and drown, we may watch our children drown with us.
No matter how well matched they may be, it is not easy for any two people to live together day in and day out, year after year, with their inescapable faults and personality defects grating upon each other. It’s not easy to help one another grow in goodness and nobility in spite of those faults—little by little adjusting to one another so that the faults of one “fit in” to the perfections of the other and unity arises from the very differences of the two persons. This is a beautiful evolution, like the emergence of the butterfly from its chrysalis; but it is not easy. No matter how selfless a couple may be, it is not easy for them to face the prospect of responsible parenthood, with all the sacrifices that entails. Especially it is not easy to face the prospect of an ultimate judgment, in which they will have to answer to God for the souls of the children who have been entrusted to them..–beginningcatholic.com
Traditional marriage is a sacrament instituted by God who loves us. It is His grace that gives us commitment to keep going. And yes, the water IS wide, the boat sometimes constricting, and the trip often difficult. But love that works through difficulties can lead to holiness and everlasting life with God.
The distance between intent and actual result can be very wide indeed. Is it because we lose sight of our intention? Is it because we allow an opportunistic evil to chip away at our noble intent?
Take a look America–a long look at the distance between what we intended our nation to be, and what our nation is becoming.
Here are the intentions for America by our first President, George Washington in his Thanksgiving Proclamation, New York, 3 October 1789
Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor– and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.
Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be– That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks–for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation–for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war–for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed–for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted–for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.
And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions– to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually–to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed–to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord–To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us–and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.
Wonderful words, yet for many years, we have watched the principles of America decay. Will we continue to ignore what is happening?
The following, very prophetic radio warning was given in 1965! Remember this old English adage–“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
May God have mercy on us. This is truly a time for prayer.
Mary’s Mountain, my novelette, is FREE on Kindle from now until election day–the week before a very important midterm election that could affect America and her traditional values forever. It’s a short read, so I hope you’ll take me up on my offer. Just click on the book cover.
The setting is much like America today where already there is an attempt to revise our history, and many have accepted it. Already, Truth is being debunked, and we swallow it–especially if what is replacing Truth agrees with our personal opinions, or tickles our indulgences. Already, our religious faith and American values are being challenged. Already, our right to hear the truth on television and social media is being meddled with. Already, our country’s enemies are at our throat, and yes, crossing our border in unbelievable numbers. And some of them actually mean us great harm. This is more than tolerance. This is dangerous!
Mary’s Mountain is a story about Tolerance taken to the extreme. It is Paul Dunaway’s struggle to re-shape his affluent but joyless life, as the opposing forces in an out-of-control, politically correct America–that he helped to create–now, threaten to take him down.
A description of the infamous Institute of Tolerance found in the novelette: Today, inside its progenies, rigid rooms are covered in fiddle-faddle flowers and sentimental hearts beating warm and fuzzy pizazz into nearly every state of the union. Outside each building, a neon sign blinks: Tolerance Today, Tolerance Tomorrow, Tolerance Forever! The signs have fingers, virtual reality, to motion the people inside. The signs move. The lights move. And the people inside are moved, to tolerate anything.
Why don’t we fight back against any of this? Many of us don’t want to be labeled intolerant. Except intolerance has nothing to do with keeping our country safe. Keeping our country safe is called plain Common Sense.
Many of us have become tolerant cowards, we have become tolerant of coarseness, we have become tolerant of laziness, we have become so tolerant that whenever we are fed lies by social media, the entertainment industry, and the fake news, we gobble it all up like a favorite dessert.
We are supposed to be flesh and blood human beings, on the lookout for ourselves and others; but instead we’re becoming sponges, soggy with wrong information– when what we need to be are heroes.
And one vote–one thoughtful vote, stemming from what America was founded to be–can make each one of us a hero.
We once considered wrong as actions against the commandments of God. Now many of those wrongs have been propagandized to seem right. In other words, we are being asked by far left progressive liberals to tolerate the intolerable. And worse, we’d better put up with it, or else be called deplorables, bigots, racists, or religious zealots; all, while they twist the United States Constitution until it is unrecognizable, and then cut down our American roots, fought for long and hard by our ancestors.
The woman asked Paul. “Who cut down the tree?”
“The tree rotted from within,” he said, catching the attention of a few others still chewing the goodies. “At first, there was no outward sign of its decay. It appeared unusually beautiful and produced an abundance of delicious fruit, so much that the people lay in its shade, stuffing themselves. Still, there were some who knew the tree was decomposing, yet did nothing to heal it.” Paul intended to follow with the truth about himself, but a young priest at the table spoke up first.
“Yes,” the priest said. “They knew; and they did nothing.” — Mary’s Mountain
We can no longer afford to do nothing. Our positive vote matters!!
What is honest tolerance anyway? And what is intolerance?
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen said: “The important point here is this: Tolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons. Tolerance applies to the erring; intolerance to the error…America is suffering not so much from intolerance, which is bigotry, as it is from tolerance, which is indifference to truth and error, and a philosophical nonchalance that has been interpreted as broad-mindedness.”
G.K Chesterton said: “Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.”
Kaye Park Hinckley’s novella “Mary’s Mountain” was so captivating that I read it in one sitting without putting the book down once. It has apocalyptic flavors, much like the “1982” or “Brave New World” or “Animal Farm” type stories from decades prior. But the novelty of Hinckley’s tale is refreshing, because she portrays a society that embraces liberalism in such a way that traditionalists are ostracized and even banned. She foretells what our nation could look like politically, socially, and morally in a frighteningly and chillingly realistic portrayal of how technology plays into the degradation of an entire generation. Hinckley is a fantastic writer who uses vivid imagery through the written word for character and plot development. I was duly impressed with the power of this story in such a short novella. Brilliantly done!–Jeannie Ewing, author of Waiting With Purpose.
And from a recent reader of Mary’s Mountain: Tolerance – I will never look at the word in the same way again. Kaye, I don’t know where to start in telling you how I am affected by your book. So for the time being, just let me say thank you, while I gather and reflect on what I have learned from you through Mary’s Mountain. Thank you for writing it. I’ll be in touch again.
The question in Mary’s Mountain, is whether Paul Dunaway–someone like you and me– will continue to indulge in his so-called broad-mindedness, or return to his honest convictions, enough to become a white-knight for America.
Becoming a white knight takes only one committed vote in this election to turn back the awful tide that is upon the threatened nation we love.
A feeling of loss fell upon him. Today, there were few churches worshipping an invisible Supreme Being. People worshipped what they could see, with a whipped-up tolerance for anything that pleased them. The People of God, as Irene predicted, had become gods themselves.– Mary’s Mountain
I hope you’ll read Mary’s Mountain as a warning–BEFORE the midterm election.
I spent my childhood summers on Panama City Beach, Florida, at a cottage my grandfather built for my grandmother, a surprise for their twenty-fifth anniversary. The beach was something very familiar, the Easter Basket colors of its water–lime green, purple, cobalt blue. Its sand white as sugar, its dunes barely able to be climbed by a young child, and challenging to the point of necessity for a pre-teen. But the most impressive characteristic of the beach were the waves.
A wave can startle. A wave can hit you in the face. And unless you’re careful, a wave can bring you down.
Isn’t life like that, too?
Don’t we often have wave after wave of surprises, disappointments, and even devastations in life? And yet, the same waves that bring these things can also bring delight, laughter, and joy.
There are scientific principals that effect the waves on a beach, make them less or more.
There are principled and unprincipled people who effect the waves in our life as well, making it more or less.
Who are those people in our lives?
On a beach, there are some wonderful waves we’d play in, and some violent waves we wouldn’t go near for fear of danger.
In life there are some wonderful people who care deeply for us, people who always tell us the truth. But there are some whose lies we fall for time after time. Shouldn’t we discriminate between the two? Shouldn’t we consider the dangers, or benefits of each?
Most of us say we seek the truth, but often, our actions show otherwise. Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. 1 John 3:18
We are only hypocrites unless we really try to discover and accept what Truth actually is. There are some people who can help us in finding real truth, people who will walk with us if we let them–people who mirror the image of God in which we are made. On the other hand, there are people who pretend to be our best friend, but who actually who mirror the Father of Lies. Though their mouth is smoother than butter, enmity is in their hearts; their words more soothing than oil, yet sharpened like swords. –Psalm 55:21
Which of these people should we reach for when the waves of life hit us in the face? Which of these should we walk with when we are drowning in the many lies of today’s culture? Which of these should we trust during our journey toward eternal life?
Along with the present moment, each human person carries a past and a vision for their future, These can be brought to the forefront by our human imagination and allow us to better understand our lives. But the Christian imagination and its belief in God presents an even wider view. We have a purpose in being here. Yes, we are here on this earth for a reason.
Without belief in God, comes the perception that what is real is only available through the senses, and that we were created through a chaotic combination of unlikely accidents. If a person thinks this way, God is negated because admitting God creates that purpose beyond the senses. It creates an invisible world, a spiritual world, that is truer and more lasting than the sensual world we can see.
The Catholic vision, the Catholic imagination, understands that –just beside our physical world — there is a spiritual world — and an ongoing battle between good and evil in both. In this battle, we often let go of God, even with the magnificent destiny promised us — eternal life in the presence of God. And yet, in spite of ourselves, we have been given hope.
I
One Common Denominator
The Incarnation
The common denominator, the sole reason, behind Catholic fiction produced by a Catholic imagination, is belief in the Incarnation. God became man, suffered for our sins, and died for love of us. In Catholic novels, God and sin (good and evil) are the forward-moving thrusts. God pursing the sinner is key, and therefore, the revelation that God’s love reaches out to all, not just the righteous.
At first glance, stories that come from the Catholic Imagination may not always be beautiful in our usual sense of the word, because the actions of people are not always beautiful. In fact, they are often plainly ugly. But when the Catholic fiction writer shows the presence of God in our world, the Truth comes out. Ugliness can be redeemed. If this is not sincerely believed by the writer, it shows, and the work falls apart.
II
Subjective Thinking
The fiction writer with a Catholic imagination writes about what is personal to himself. He/she is a subjective thinker, writing as a particular human being created by and directly related to God. For the Catholic writer, human beings exist only because God exists. The writer views himself as a child with a Father who loves him, a child who is often disobedient, and yet, at times completely in line. And he understands that the Father’s love does not disappear in either situation. When a Catholic writer believes himself to be both ugly and beautiful, but nevertheless loved, his imagination will transfer that human mystery to Story.
III
Mystery
The Catholic imagination shines out the existence of a good God even when the human deficiencies of a character keeps that character from recognizing it. The Catholic imagination also shines out evil. Evil is not simply a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be endured. (Flannery O’Connor) A Catholic fiction writer presents a truth that is higher than anything material, an intangible truth, and a mystery that some will not accept.
IV
Becoming
A writer’s characters and their dilemmas are always becoming something either higher, or lower, than before. The becoming is a mystery, too. Key to that mystery is weaving authenticity into the story. Everything in the universe is connected and forever on the move; this is concrete science. The Catholic writer uses the concrete, but aims beyond it through immaterial Truths.
This is a quote from Catholic novelist Walker Percy’s 1983 address to the trainee priests graduating from St Josephs College Seminary in Louisiana. I would add that it speaks also to all who write with a Catholic imagination. The address ended with these words:
Never has there been such loneliness in the midst of crowds, never such hunger in the face of satiation. Never has there been a more fertile ground for the seed and the harvest the Lord spoke of. All that is needed is a bearer of the Good News who speaks it with such authenticity that it can penetrate the most exhausted hearing, revive the most jaded language.
Authenticity is the key word here. The realization that sinners, like each of us, can be redeemed. Think of the beauty in that! Think of how the world is changed when even one sinner is touched by the grace of God!
Sometimes we’re concerned only about appearances; the outside of things. We stuff closets with things we don’t want any visitor to see. We cover our faces with make-up, and our bodies with just the right clothes to make a favorable impression. We say all the things people want to hear whether we believe in them or not. We all do this to some extent.
On the surface it may be harmless–unless we are covering-up–and yes, hiding– an ugliness going on inside us. When we are concerned only with what others think about us, we have no principles. When we say one thing in daylight when everyone is watching, but do another thing in the dark when no one sees us, then we are hypocritical, self-serving, and false human beings who should not be trusted.
Isn’t this what we despise about politicians? Their dishonesty. Their hypocrisy. Their self-grabbing. Politicians polish up the outside of themselves so that they appear to care for the downtrodden, when the downtrodden are only a means to votes.
We see this today, as far as I’m concerned, in the Democratic Party where nothing is too sacred to use for their own selfish gain.
The repugnant and ugly disregard for the American people is increasing. The Democrat Party can no long hide the stink of its hypocrisy.
Those on the far left of this party are crusted over with hatred, incivility, and an actual call for violence against those they disagree with. They are completely self-serving, without regard for our country. Where are those principled stops that ought to be there?
There are times when any of us may consider an action that is completely self-serving, BUT we don’t, because some life-principle we believe in, stops us. However, there seems to be no life-principle to stop the self-aggrandizement of the left-wingers in this party. No lies they will not tell, no people they will not use, no person they would go out of their way to honestly help.
For nearly two years they have been in a position to actually help the American people and yet they have helped only themselves –. And today? We are losing everything, including our American values upon which this country was built.
Not long ago, our country was finally making gains–big gains of respect which had been so lacking throughout the world, gains in our pocketbooks due to jobs in a booming economy, and a burgeoning strength for Americans of all races–not pitting one race against the other, or one gender against the other to get votes.
In the upcoming congressional election, we the people–all the people, have the ability to keep moving forward. Don’t let the left-wingers destroy our country.
Inside each of us, is the potentiality to do right, or to do wrong. By our life principles we choose the path for one or the other. And before doing so, we make must make judgments, especially when we VOTE.
If there is no judgment, then evil is good and good is evil.–Fulton J. Sheen
I must judge the left-wingers in this party. As an American Citizen and VOTER, I must ask: where are their principles? Where is their path taking America??
I suggest it is not the right path. I suggest that time and time again it has been the wrong path of plunder, self-indulgence, and complete hypocrisy. I see an uncontrolled border –over two million illegals now ‘somewhere in America,’ with more to come. I see deadly drugs, violent gangs, and the abuse of young children, all because we have NO border.
I see an unbelievable rise in inflation–and yet they say there’s no inflation. Over eighty thousand new US tax agents hired who ‘must be proficient with guns.’ What??? I thought they were against guns–but that’s only for us, not them.
I watched the unbelievable nastiness of their lies in the Kavanaugh confirmation, as I’m sure you did. The lengths they would go to in order to get their way was abominable! I hear them legislate death for new born babies who have survived abortions! I see the streets of the cities they run piled with homeless people living in squalor. I see crime run rampart and nothing done about it. And I hear their so-called progressive claims that they are more compassionate, more intelligent, more moral than conservatives. It is obvious that they are NONE of these things. They are the party that if given more power will spread their deadly bacteria and finally bring an end to America, the greatest nation on Earth. I cannot vote for anyone in such a contaminated political party. Can You?
Jesus said:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.
You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin,
and have neglected the weightier things of the law:
judgment and mercy and fidelity.
But these you should have done, without neglecting the others.
Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel!
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.
You cleanse the outside of cup and dish,
but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence.
Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup,
so that the outside also may be clean.”
We must pray for America. We must pray for life, for the family, for honesty in government, and in ourselves. And WE MUST VOTE IN THE CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS for those who will give us an honest, non-convoluted, adherence to our United States Constitution.
How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
— Genesis 28:16-17
Some places in this world are sacred. Upon entering, one bows with respect because the hallowed lie here, one day to be made eternally whole. Just outside the fictional town of Bethel, in the shadow of Bethel Mountain, lies Heaven’s Gate Graveyard. It is much older than the town—some say as old as the Chattahoochee River that winds and bends and runs alongside it. Others say its very earth was set here by God, after Noah and the flood, as if to place heaven’s portal on earth. It is a beautiful place traced by tall trees—pine, soapberry, chinaberry, and magnolias. During summer, liriope with spiked purple blooms edge the borders, with camellias and gardenias taking their places as the seasons turn. But despite its beauty, heaven’s portal brings few people joy.
Near the end of the Civil War, there was a battle near Bethel between invading Union soldiers and Confederates, old men and boys by then, holding on to their homes. Dozens of Confederates from all around Bethel, and some Federals from who knows where, were buried here, side by side. No disagreements now. The graves all look alike. There are no flags waving above them; no one can tell the difference between friend and enemy.
Sightings of phantom soldiers are not uncommon in Heaven’s Gate Graveyard. Neither are the smells of gunpowder and awful shrieks from the pain of death. People often report apparitions of dirty, disheveled children calling for their mothers, calling for their fathers, or hearing children giggle when there are none about. The most famous reported sightings are of four children, two from the South and two from the North.
The first is a fatherless boy of twelve from Georgia who served the Southern army because he was found alone in the woods and taken by the dreaded Confederate Guard; a boy with a limp from birth who’d held the Confederate flag; a courageous boy with a mother and brothers who loved him; a boy who died in a battle that was not his.
The second is a motherless girl of ten from Alabama, who came with her father to war because her home had been set on fire, her mother burned to death, and there was no one else to watch over her; a girl who tended the dying; a tender-hearted girl who was loved by the soldiers; a girl who died in a battle that was not hers.
The third is a fatherless boy from Ohio who enlisted as a drummer and died at the age of eleven when a fragment from a shrapnel shell crashed through his drum as he played it; a boy whose father deserted him before he was born; a boy who loved his big brother enough to follow him into war; a boy who died in a battle that was not his.
The fourth is a motherless teenage girl from Pennsylvania who, while she was helping to load a cannon, saw her father lying wounded on a battlefield; a girl who ran through a hail of bullets to get to him; a girl who was shot three times as she threw her arms around her father; a girl who died in a battle that was not hers.
Those children and others, motherless and fatherless, have often been seen playing around the high statue dedicated to them—a statue of two children standing side by side and entitled, TheChildren ofBattles. No one knows why the children are smiling and holding hands after going through such labors. And no one knows who sculpted the statue. Neither is it known when the statue was erected. It just appeared one day. The words on its pedestal read:
THE CHILDREN OF BATTLES
All the children could remember beyond the wooden bars of their cribs was betrayal.
All the children could see in every direction was the bright blue sky turning drab.
All the children could feel were rough roots waiting beneath the grass to scrape into their skin.
All the children could hear was the song they tried to sing and the slap of hands that ended it.
All the children could taste was a bitter broth of falsity from foul mouths.
All the children could smell was the stench of putrid flesh decomposing in an unkempt orchard.
All the children could imagine was a splendid gift as a reward for their struggle.
All the children hoped for was a faithful embrace, to be pressed to a breast and suckled in love.
But that’s not the way it happened.
A Story Of Betrayal
THE MORE COMPLICATED THE PRESENT, THE MORE FRIGHTENING THE FUTURE, THE MORE WE REMEMBER THE PAST.
The following short piece is about the past, the Civil War. It is not in my novel, “Shooting at Heaven’s Gate.” But the destructiveness of a particular kind of war is present in the novel — those battles going on in a single human mind and fought alone.
Verbally handed down to family by my great grandmother, Sarah, who despite the excruciating loss of husband, children, land and home, never failed to use stories from her past to illustrate a positive point. This story is about the betrayal of war, and about the first child — Sarah’s child– mentioned in the reported sightings of children seen playing around the statue in Heaven’s Gate Graveyard.
SARAH’S SONS
They stand beside each other in Heaven’s Gate Graveyard, the bent old woman and her great-grand daughter, a fresh-faced girl of eleven, looking up at the Children of Battles statue. “Why do wars happen?’ the girl asks.
“Wars come from human greed, pride, and revenge; the great betrayers,” the old woman says in an ancient voice, shaking her head sadly. “Under the darkest of skies, all wars hang humanity on a cross.”
“On a cross like Jesus?” the girl asks, after Judas betrayed Him?”
The old woman nods, yes. “War is always about betrayal; of country, mother, father, child, or friend. It brings lifelong consequences, and of course, death. This graveyard has many stories to tell.”
“Tell me one,” the girl says eagerly, and the old woman smiles.
“Picture it,” the old woman says, raising her fragile hands as if they held an invisible occurrence; fingers straight as she can make them, thumbs touching. “Picture my own grandmother, your third great grandmother. Sarah was her name. See her? Picture her blue eyes, once crystal-lit, now drab from sorrow. It is 1865. Wilkinson County Georgia near the end of the Civil War, after General Sherman’s men have ravaged home after home. Sarah stands in the corner of the dining room of her war-battered house, little Patrick clinging to her skirt, as she watches the latest band of ragged, boyish men around her table. Three of them.
“Yankees?”
No, they are faces she’s never seen before yet knows well. They are not Yankees. They are from the feared Confederate Home Guard, but in the minds of many southern women, they are almost as bad. They’ve been sent to capture any deserting Confederate soldier, and worse for Sarah, to gather young boys for the dwindling Southern Army. Boys like her headstrong son, twelve-year-old Frank, born with one leg shorter than the other, and a limp he would never get rid of.
Picture the elbows of the hungry Guard, angled like the wings of chicken hawks guarding the prey in their bowls, while they eat and eat. Thin fingers, like talons lifting flesh. They eat hurriedly, cautiously, as if Sarah might take it all back; the last stewed apples, the roasted sweet potatoes, the cornbread made from the last handful she has left. They are Confederate sons, like her own, but Sarah feels no empathy. She knows why they have come.
One of the soldiers–he finishes first–wipes a grimy forearm across his mouth adding sweet potatoes to the mud on his homespun shirt. “Thank you, ma’m,” he says, and winks at Thomas Marion who is staring at the soldier’s left thigh. The thigh is wrapped with a dingy, cotton cloth. There is some staining on the cloth, red brown, like the clay Thomas Marion helped his big brothers till when they put in the patch last spring before the enticement to war overtook them, that luring decoy to manhood and glory. But the red staining is not from clay. They are blood stains. The notorious Confederate Home Guard has its troubles, too.
“How old are you, boy?” The soldier shifts in the ladder-back chair with a grimace.
“Nine.”
“Well suh, too bad you ain’t just a mite bigger,” he grins. “We’d take you with us to fight the Yanks.”
“I got big brothers fightin’ the Yanks,” Thomas Marion says. Sarah’s body stiffens. Don’t talk about your brothers, she’s thinking. Please don’t mention Frank!
“Sure ‘nuf?” the soldier teases. “How many big brothers you got battling for the cause?”
“Three.” Sarah sees pride puff up in her son’s face, a face pretty enough to have been a girl’s, and prays, Please don’t mention Frank!
“Where they at?” another soldier asks.
Thomas Marion turns toward the soldier and shrugs his slim shoulders.
“Well, who’re they fightin’ with?”
“The Rebs,” says Thomas Marion.
The men laugh. Thomas Marion’s pretty face pinkens.
“I mean what brigade they in?” the soldier chuckles.
Sarah speaks at once. “They were sent to Virginia, on the train, to Atlanta. All three of them.”
No one asks the names of her sons, and she does not ask for the names around her table. Tonight, they are simply Confederate soldiers that she, as a southern woman, is expected to trust, expected to feed with food she cannot spare.
“We ain’t been to Virginia yet,” one of them says. He watches Thomas Marion remove a bowl from the table. Thomas Marion circles a finger inside the blue-flowered porcelain, but the soldier has already done that himself; there is nothing left. Thomas Marion looks coldly at the soldier, and sniffs.
The soldier with the bound leg asks Sarah in a kindly tone, “Your husband gone to Virginia, too?”
“My husband fought in the Battle of Atlanta with my oldest son. They are dead now.” She unwinds Patrick’s arms from around her skirts, and squeezing back tears, swings the thin, little boy to her hip, and speaks softly; Thomas Marion does not yet know the fate of his brothers. “My fourteen and fifteen year-old sons were killed, too, at the Battle of Chickamauga.” She emphasizes their ages, thinking that if the Confederate guard should find Frank, they would have pity on her, and see that she’s already sacrificed enough.
“Sorry,” the soldier says. He clicks his tongue against his front teeth and shakes his head slowly. “You wimm’in folk are the real soldiers. You runnin’ the place by yerself?”
Sarah nods, yes, thinking again of Frank, thinking of the daily sweat on his brow and the nightly ache in his bones, doing the work of three grown men.
“I guess you waited a while ‘fore ya had them two? He tilts his head toward Thomas Marion, then back to Patrick in her arms.
“A while,” Sarah says.
Except there is Frank, hidden in the woods; twelve, and too tall for his age. Tall enough to carry a gun, the Confederate Guard would say. Those were Frank’s words, too. He wanted to sign up. He wanted to fight. Sarah forbade it. “I’ve already lost a husband and three sons. I will not lose you, too! You are still only a boy.” Except, he is more than clever, his limp never deters him, and he runs the farm like a man.
A slight clap of thunder snaps in the distance and a cooling breeze flushes the still air from the dining room. Sarah faces the open window. Through it, the fading light of a sinking sun dims the faces of her sons, and the sons of the Confederate Guard. She lights the lamp. Please Lord, don’t let them find Frank. And if they do, make him resist. Don’t let him get it in his stubborn head that he should go with them.
“Reckon it’s starting ter rain, agin,” one of the soldiers says, his words without expression, his voice as routine as the rain has been. “You got an old barn we could sleep in ’till mornin’?” He looks toward the soldier with the wounded leg. “We ain’t go’n find no recruits tonight.”
The wounded soldier says nothing; he watches Sarah and waits for her response.
She knows they’ve seen the barn. They had to have passed it on their way in. If she lets them stay there, they’ll take what’s left of the corn to feed their haggard horses. Yet they expect her extended hospitality. The injured one has been taught well though. She sizes him up as one who would not ask for extra favors. He will allow her to offer the use of the barn, knowing that she will offer it.
“Down past the hill,” she says. “You’re welcome to stay.”
Sarah, Thomas Marion, and Patrick watch from the porch as the soldiers lead their horses the half mile down to the barn. The wounded soldier rides. He bends over the tangled mane and lays his face on the horse’s neck, stroking him, as if apologizing for being its master. Beyond the barn are the woods where she has hidden Frank. He must be still, must be quiet. Don’t let them find him!
She will not be able to get to him until after the soldiers are gone. And now it is raining again on the already soaked ground. She is certain her boy is cold and hungry, but she prays he will not move from beneath the big live oak where she leaves him, almost ritually now. Last week, four evenings out of seven, she has been right. Tomorrow will be no different. More soldiers will come, mostly General Wheeler’s men, still believing in victory, that it’s not a lost cause. So, daily, she will hide her son in the woods and feed the soldiers until they leave the next morning with bellies full as they can get them on the meager food Sarah has left.
The next morning, Patrick wakes her. He is crying for food. Thomas Marion comes in, hungry, too. She gives them a little corn meal and water, then makes some for Frank. From the window, she can see that the soldiers are gone, so, Sarah and her young ones set out for the woods where she hid her boy beneath the live oak. He is not there!
“Frank!” she calls and circles the trunk of the great tree, once then twice. “Frank! No! No! No!”
Did the Confederate Guard capture him, or had he volunteered to go with them? Either way, she is betrayed, not only by the now-divided country for which her ancestors fought in the American Revolution, not only by the Confederate Guard, but perhaps even by the son she adores. She drops to the ground, holding onto her last two boys, and cries, deep, deafening howls that would ransack any heart.
There are several moments of silence after the old woman finishes the story when her great-granddaughter does not speak. The girl is too young to remember any of these people. Still, Sarah and her sons were family members, and their story brings tears to her young eyes.
“Let it be a lesson,” the old woman tells the girl. “Be careful where you put your faith. Even someone you’ve been told to trust can betray you. Sarah shouldn’t have trusted those soldiers, even if they were Confederates. They were as threatening as the Yankees who’d already razed her fields, stolen her pigs, and left her only one cow. The Home Guard didn’t give a hoot about her. She was only the means to a meal or two, and a place to spend the night. And then they left, taking another piece of her heart.”
“Do you think Frank chose to go with them?” the girl asks.
“No one will ever know if he chose to go, or whether the Guard found him and simply snatched him up, but he ended up carrying the Confederate flag for Georgia’s Seventh Regiment, limping all the way. The Confederates called it their final effort of the War. And it was surely final for Frank. He wound up in Petersburg Virginia where he, and hundreds more, were killed.”
“But then, the war was over,” the girl says, always hoping for a happy ending.
“There is no end to war, except for the dead. By then, much of the south was in ruins.”
“What happened to Sarah?”
“She scratched a living from the ground for her two remaining sons because she was strong-minded, and lived to be an old lady like me. She didn’t forgot those she’d lost, or the betrayers on both sides, but in the end, she forgave them. “
“I would never forgive them!”
The old woman smiles. “You might change your mind when you’re older. I was your age when Sarah told me the story I’ve just told, and I said the same to Sarah, “I would never forgive them!” Then Sarah looked back at me through very old eyes. ” We each have our crosses and particular battles to bear, but Jesus forgave His betrayers as He hung dying from His Cross. He calls us to do no less.”
The girl looks upward, her eyes anxious. The shadow of Bethel Mountain falls over her face, then sweeps over the graveyard. The old woman wraps an arm around the girl’s slim shoulders to pull her close. “But remember, Jesus rose from His tomb. And one day, you will rise from yours. Everybody in their bones knows that something is eternal. So, don’t be sad, little angel. Life on earth is a hard climb. The devil is always at your heels wanting to trip you up. You’ll have many betrayals, crosses, and struggles on your way to Heaven’s Gate, but after you’ve entered it? Well, that’s when your real life begins.
Sarah’s Sons, copyright 2022, Kaye Park Hinckley
P.S. The song title and these beautiful lyrics are perfect! Can’t believe I found them. Produced by Kevin Costner, and his daughter, Lily Costner, is singing. Season 2- Ep 7 of YELLOWSTONE features the track “Heaven’s Gate” (feat Lily Costner) it will also be included on KCMW’s upcoming release “Tales From Yellowstone.” Writing Credits Lily Costner (Lily Mae and Margerie/BMI) Teddy Morgan (Teddy Morgan Music/BMI, Admin by BMG) Jack Williams (Songs of LGME!/ASCAP, Admin by Ole Music Group)
SOME PEOPLE TRY TO BE TALL BY CUTTING OFF THE HEADS OF OTHERS.— Paramahansa Yogananda
“What I wanna know is who’s in charge?” one woman says to the other. She is shaking her head as if speaking of something too horrible to be believed. “Well, today it’s a scary world. Who is in charge of anything these days? You can take all the precautions you want, but things still happen,” the other comments. “Mama said she heard on Big Bam radio the guy went crazy and started shooting at everybody in the clinic. People killed for no reason at all. You can’t predict something like that.” “Yeah, just innocent bystanders doing their jobs, and some nut-case in a face-mask walks in with a gun.” “What’s worse, he got away! Who knows if they’ll ever find him?” She gives a depressing sigh. “We live in a dangerous world.”
How could it happen?
In An Age of Mass Shootings, This Psychological, Southern Gothic Novel, Considers the Answers.
I thought about writing this novel, “Shooting at Heaven’s Gate,” several years ago after being shocked that in a small town near mine, a disillusioned and angry young man took up his shotgun and killed many of his family and co-workers. Why had he done it? Jealousy, greed, revenge, drugs, or some mental disfunction? Why had he destroyed the people he most cared for? Seemingly senseless shootings/murders like these seem to be becoming more prevalent. But the reasons behind them are ancient.
Most of us can retell the story of Cain and Abel, a story of one brother murdering the other. Genesis 4. When the Father (God) favored Abel’s gift over Cain’s, a few narcissistic traits began to itch in Cain, and then finally took him over — jealousy, greed, anger, and revenge, leading to Cain’s murder of Abel. Did God love Cain? Of course. But the sin of Cain separated him from God, just as sin separates us today from God.
Jealousy, Greed, Anger, and Revenge
I have no idea what caused the shootings in this nearby small town, but I suspect some of the above narcissistic traits were involved.
Our life is an ongoing drama between God and each of us. Whether we accept it or not, no matter who we are or what we do, each of us has an inborn, spiritual relationship with the God who created us, the God who loves us infinitely. We can deny it or shout our disagreement. We can act out in reprehensible ways to destroy God’s sovereignty over us. Our God-given free will allows that behavior. But truth cannot be altered. We were made to be good. We live in a world that God made to be good. And yet moral and physical evil exists in spite of the goodness — and therefore, human suffering exists. Yet, God is still merciful.
Goodness Left Behind
In the novel, “Shooting at Heaven’s Gate, goodness is left behind for a time, and evil runs rampart in Bethel, Alabama. Dr. Malcolm J. Hawkins, III, narcissistic, arrogant head of psychology at Bethel University feels his position and his credibility threatened by the impressive, up-and-coming English professor, Ginnie Gillan, because that is the way of narcissists.
“Good and evil do not exist when searching for the best way to scratch an itch. The only question is, Can I get away with it? “says Dr. Malcolm J. Hawkins, PH. D.
If someone threatens Mal’s narcissist’s ego, he shifts into a war-like predator mode and scratches that ‘itch.’ Jealousy, greed, anger and revenge take over him, and Mal decides to use Ginnie’s husband Edmund’s fear and weakness against her. Feeding Edmund a steady diet of drugs and manipulation, Mal then lights the fuse of the greatest tragedy Bethel has ever known. Beyond understanding? Yes!
Though Edmund acts from a motive of jealousy and anger, he is not a ruthless man, but a victim of Hawkins, and of his own sad life story. Out of an impotence that leads to drugs and the easy way out, Edmund K. Gillan gives himself over to Dr. Hawkins’s control in an effort to relieve his debilitating headaches, stemming from his childhood.
Edmund Gillan is outwardly unassertive and weak, a person who’s never won first-place in any contest because he never asked to play the game. Inside, he yearns to be decisive and strong as is his well-liked wife, Ginnie. Edmund is an assistant Sociology professor, raised by his grandfather, a Holiness preacher whose condemning voice Edmund still hears, though the old man is now dead. From the time he was a student at Bethel College until the present, Edmund has allowed himself to be under the heavy thumb of Dr. Hawkins; frequently visiting him for the kind of numbing relief the psychologist provides. Hawkins pretends to listen to Edmund, gradually hooking him on drugs, just as he has many other students who afterwards, never fail to tout him, stroking his unfathomable ego–just what Hawkins is after.
An extremely envious and narcissistic man, Mal Hawkins sees every situation and person as a threat; so when he hears that Edmund’s wife, Ginnie, is seen as an upcoming superstar at the college, and may soon be a department head, Mal views her as deadly competition, and decides to bring her down, using her own husband as his pawn. Edmund loves his wife, but he also loves the drugs Mal gives him. The drugs, his headaches, and the voice of his grandfather, keep Edmund in constant conflict.
Opposition to Wickedness
Just as in a novel, there are real-life compassionate and loving people that shine in opposition to wickedness. Loving teenager, Alma Broussard, lives with her quirky mother Moline, who works in a dental office, and her feisty Aunt Pauline, who runs the chicken farm on which they live with Jose Alvarez and his teenaged daughter, Angelina who has leukemia. Their lives seem wholly separate from the feuds of academia—but again, revelations emerge, and dark secrets lurk in Moline’s past that will bring the people she loves straight into the path of a murderous madman.
Mercy
Even after Cain’s murder of his brother, God showed him mercy. The same mercy He shows not only in this novel, but upon repentance, to us as well. After Cain killed his brother Abel, God declared to Cain, “Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth” (Genesis 4:11-12). In response, Cain lamented, “My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me” (Genesis 4:13-14). God responded, “Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him” (Genesis 4:15-16).
Shooting at Heaven’s Gate is a “Theology of the Cross” novel, a battle between good and evil. A bona fide WAR, in which genuine goodness and grace are confronted by wickedness. In the wake of death and destruction, Bethel, the town that used to be called Heaven’s Gate, will find no easy answers, but always, there is hope for mercy and redemption.
PRIORPRAISE forShooting at Heaven’s Gate:
Family relations and lifelong secrets, human brokenness and the grace of transformation, mass shootings, deception, sin and forgiveness. These fundamental themes of the human search for meaning, of the challenge of faith, reconciliation and conversion, are woven throughout this story of a small town in rural Alabama. The complexities of each character, from university professors to farm hands, become the stage for an exploration of the human condition, in the style of C.S. Lewis, with echoes of T.S. Eliot, Geoffrey Chaucer, Macbeth and many others. The novel is followed by a list of themes, questions for book discussions and selected quotes, making it all the easier for study groups of any kind. — Fr. Christopher Viscardi, SJ, Chair and Professor of Theology at Spring Hill College, Mobile, Alabama
Kaye Hinckley has more than earned her keep as a significant contender vying for a living Catholic literature. —Joshua Hren, How to Read (and Write) Like a Catholic, Co-Founder of the MFA at University of St. Thomas, Houston
With a brisk narrative pace, Shooting at Heaven’s Gate by Kaye Park Hinckley invites readers to explore the complicated lives of characters suffering with loss, illness, addiction, and deception. The plot twists make this novel both entertaining and thought provoking with the reassurance that good does win. — Johnnie Bernhard, award-winning author of Sisters of the Undertow and Hannah and Ariela.
Faith and faithlessness do battle in Kaye Park Hinckley’s thought-provoking, unsparing new novel. She reveals the hellish torments … and heavenly convictions … of everyday people in a small Alabama town in an age of mass shootings. Bring faith as you enter Heaven’s Gate. — Charles McNair, author of The Epicureans
Don’t be lulled by the easy, descriptive manner of the beginning chapters. They introduce opposing characters whose thoughts and actions display the good and bad of human nature. Soon, you’ll be put on high alert, and move at lightning speed to satisfy a need to know how these characters interplay with each other. Mal, the manipulator and Edmund’s muddled loss of reality, cause the reader to begin to question, even fear what’s coming, hoping it’s the dream state of a sick, delusional man. Of course, it is no dream. Once the sound of metal is heard, the energy and climax of the book literally explode. Throughout the entire novel, the belief in salvation and forgiveness through confession, suffering, and atonement surfaces as a tenet of Catholic belief, symbolized not only in the characters, but in minute details…about flowers, and guns, geography, and history. Topics of current world concern are touched upon and mentioned briefly, without political overtones, but enough to generate reflection about good and evil, and how they come to be in the human person. A great read. – Terry Lonergan, Longtime Educator, Principal, and reader, Atlanta, Georgia
“Shooting at Heaven’ Gate is different from Hinckley’s other books as the moral themes are explicit and upfront, rather than subtle. I believe this work is a masterpiece. But then I love Kaye’s books because of how she writes (with the eloquence of angels) and for her choice of gritty topics (life is messy). “Shooting at Heaven’s Gate is not Pollyanna and cotton candy. Rather it is filled with real-world brokenness and the need for redemption, accurately painting the struggles on this side of the grave. — Denise-Marie Martin, author of the upcoming novel, “Tangled Violets,” to be released September, 8, 2022.
Translating a World on the Edge 