Ep12 In The Shadow Of The Mountain C.L.Knox stories

The speaker reflects on their rough week, coping with depression, and the need to avoid dwelling on negative experiences. They then discuss their childhood in Birmingham, Alabama during the tumultuous 60s, where their mother fought for racial equality. They also mention attending a Quaker-run summer camp focused on farming and survival skills. The speaker recalls a bonfire tradition at the camp and a fellow camper named Billy Shears. They also touch on their mother's belief in the Unitarian Church and their own shift towards Christianity. The speaker concludes by discussing Jesus' mission to bring division rather than peace. Well, episode 12, episode 11 was kind of choppy. And, and, like I said, at the end, or towards the end, I was having a rough time that week, like, circumstances haven't changed. But you learn to cope, you learn to deal with not just cope, but to deal with it either that or you plunge into depression, which apparently right now there's a lot of people suffering with depression. You know, having sadness is one thing, feelings of being depressed are another. But when I say they're, they're in depression, it's a deep, it's a deep thing. It's more than just, I feel sad, you know, and the problem is, we tend to want to dwell on things. And it's good to examine, but not always good to dwell. I want to talk about the, some, some stuff that happened in my childhood before I came to Canada, before I ever took LSD. My mom was, I grew up in, like, until I was 11 in Birmingham, Alabama, I was born there and lived there in the, in the 60s. It was tumultuous, it was a tumultuous time in the South. My mom marched with Martin Luther King. She marched in the, in the Selma March. She, she knew Martin Luther King though how well, I don't, I wouldn't be able to say the same as Jesse Jackson and Ralph Abernathy and a lot of those guys that were, you know, Jackson was just a young man, maybe, you know, maybe just learning the ropes from MLK. And I don't think he learned very well, honestly. But Ralph Abernathy was probably more of a mentor to, to Martin Luther King. They were both, all three of them, but those, the first, the primary two, Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King were both Baptist ministers. And my beliefs from reading their writings and history about them and listening to speeches from Martin Luther King is that this man understood Christianity, he understood what it was about, more so than most. A lot of people wear the label of Christian, but they don't really carry it. Anyway, my mom followed, believed in the equality of the races. She fought for her whole life, to some degree or another. According to her, even when she was a teenager, she stood up for the rights of the black population of Birmingham, Alabama. I don't know if you saw the movie The Help, but that, that was the culture that I was raised in. I had a maid. My mom had a maid. When I was nine, my mom worked to get me and my brother, Steve, into a camp up in Vermont called the Farm and Wilderness Camp, summer camps. They were run by a Quaker man, an idealistic Quaker fellow that he bought a lake up in Vermont. He bought the whole property that surrounded the lake. He established three camps. He had what he called the Indian camp or a native camp, where the young men would come and live as First Nations or as he perceived First Nations lived, learn to forage and stuff like that. I didn't go to that camp. My brother, Steve, went to that camp. He could talk better about what that one was. The camp that I went to was a pioneer's camp. It was a farm. We learned farming and ranching and whatever. That kind of stuff. It was really basically farming and survival techniques, like if you got lost in the woods, which is probably the same kind of stuff that Steve was learning, but they were wearing loincloths and living in teepees. We were in camps. We were in cabins. Steve learned beadwork. I learned wood burning or whatever it was. My mom ended up getting a grant for both of us to go. I think Steve went in 66. I think he went three years. I only went to 67 and 68. In 67, when we went up there, part of the way my mom found out about this camp was from Ralph Abernathy. He was sending his son, who I think his name was Ralph too, to the camp. Ralph Jr. was my age. We both, in 1967, we were both at the camp. In 68, when it was time to go back to the camp, Abernathy's son didn't come that year. 68 was the year that Martin Luther King was assassinated. It was earlier in April or May. I think he was assassinated in April of 1968. That was great sadness for tons of people. Still, to this day, we still have a sadness about the death of a man who lived and preached peace. He was by no means a perfect man. We can get into that maybe a little later too, because none of us are. None of us reach that perfection. At these camps, like I said, I learned farming and survival techniques. Every year, we would grow our own food. At the end of the year, we would have a banquet. I think it was a month. It might have been a six-week long camp. It was long. It wasn't just a couple of weeks, if I remember correctly, because we actually grew stuff. In the fall, at the end, we had a big banquet. Both years that I went, there was this heavy or huge amount of corn on the cob. Basically, that's what we ate at the banquet was corn on the cob. Just as much as you could eat fresh-picked corn on the cob slathered in butter and salt. We made our own root beer there, and we made our own Mountain Dew. The Mountain Dew was really good, way different than—and the root beer. They were both way different than the stuff you buy. We made it from—well, it wasn't a kit. We made it from scratch. I don't remember what was in our Mountain Dew, but it was yummy. Both of those were yummy. They were good. There was this big bonfire. Every year, they tried to outdo the year before in the way that they started the bonfire. The first year, it was a series of burning arrows were shot into this huge bonfire, which was pretty impressive. The second year, 1968, that bonfire was a cable. There was a cable strung up, and there was a doghouse built with an effigy of Snoopy the dog on it. They lit the back of the doghouse on fire, and it came down into the pile of rubbish. It was probably smothered in gasoline because as soon as it hit—or diesel or something—as soon as it hit the bonfire rubbish, the whole thing burst into fire. It was kind of funny. Snoopy's doghouse on fire. Anyway, another thing that happened in 1968, which was kind of bizarre, and I should have looked this up, but I think it was 1968 or 1967 when Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band came out. There's a part in that where there's a circus caller describing what's going to happen with Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. All of a sudden, there's, and let me introduce to you the one and only Billy Shears, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. In camp in 1968, there was a young guy my age whose name was Billy Shears. I remember clearly. He got razzed a bit about it because the album was either within a year had come out. I'm pretty sure. It was kind of funny. Another thing I remember about Billy Shears is on one of our hikes, one of the hikes that we had through the woods, we were walking across a log. He was, I think, the first person to step on this log, or he fell off the log. Anyway, inside the log was a bee's nest, and he went through the bee's nest, and the bees just swarmed out and totally attacked him. It wrecked our hike. It wrecked probably the rest of his summer. I don't remember that, but he was sent home with multiple bee stings. I don't remember if he had a serious allergic reaction or not, but whatever. That was interesting. That was an interesting thing. To talk about my mom's belief system a little bit, at that time, it created issues. It created difficulties for us at times. She was a member of the Unitarian Church. At that time, it was just called the Unitarian Church. Now, they call it the Unitarian Universalist or something like that. They were Universalist then. They believed basically all religions were the same, and they all had the same message or whatever. They all stood on equal ground. Hence, universal. You can check it out if you want. You may already have checked it out and have formed an opinion. But anyway, I didn't know at that time, but later, after I became a Christian, I began to understand quite critically the fallacy in that. It can't be true. First of all, the leaders of all the religions, that's one of the things that Christianity gets lambasted with, exclusivity all the time. You're exclusive. Well, they're all exclusive. Every single religion, faith in the world has exclusive faith claims or whatever. Then we enter into post-modernity, which I don't want to go too deeply in that. Maybe I'll run another podcast just for talking about that kind of stuff, like I've thought about. I think I mentioned it last time too. But there is one thing I wanted to point out about who Jesus was and how getting to know him at an early age and getting to interface with him without preconceived ideas, probably at the beginning of the end of the country, the U.S. being a Christian nation. So it was the beginning of the end of that. I haven't read any kind of Bible stuff at all yet, but I want to read something. I've got it on my computer over here. It's Luke 12, which you should read the whole chapter if you have the intestinal fortitude to do so. But I just want to read from 49 to 53. Jesus says he didn't come to the earth to bring peace. I want to tell you that he did bring peace. He does bring peace, but that wasn't the primary mission at his first coming. That wasn't why he came. He said in this passage, I came to cast fire on the earth and I would that it were already kindled. I have a baptism to be baptized with and how great is my distress until it is accomplished. So here's Jesus talking about what he's come to do. Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on in the house where there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided father against son and son against father and mother against daughter and daughter against mother and mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law and sisters and brothers and whatever. I just kept going after that because that's the fact. Like even families, nevermind the division we see in the world, in our own country, in our own city, in our own province, in our own continent, in our own, the Western world and then the rest of the world. Nevermind those divisions. It's back to subsidiarity again, back to the smallest of governments, our families. There's division in our families and the division I'm talking about is strictly because of this belief in Christ. So either you believe he is who he said he is. It's either liar, lunatic or God. That's what C.S. Lewis said. It's liar, lunatic or God. You believe it or you don't. That's the way it comes down to. If you do think to go and read that passage, Luke 12, 49 to 53, continue on reading for 54 to 56 because it's pertinent to our age, to our time as well. The thing is, when I said Jesus didn't come to bring peace, he does bring peace. But that wasn't why he came. He came to cast a fire of judgment on the earth. So that was the beginning. That was the beginning of the judgment. I was talking about judgment last time and I got a lot of sympathy stuff. Thank you. I appreciate the sympathy. It's encouraging to know that people are listening and watching and want to encourage me. I thank you so much for that. It breeds a strong sense of affection. The people that reach out to me, I feel affectionately drawn to you now. So thank you. But there is something else I wanted to quote from C.S. Lewis. It came out of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Let's see if I can read it. I wrote it in pencil, which probably wasn't the best idea. So The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Mr. Beavers, when he's talking about Aslan. Now Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan is a stereotype of Jesus. The Son of God, the Lion. And the way that he's presented in the Chronicles for Narnia is really cool. C.S. Lewis does a great job. But there's one point when I think it was Lucy. He was talking to Lucy and she says, is he safe? Is Aslan safe? And Mr. Beavers says, who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he's good. And that's where we draw this line. We differentiate between judgment and fear and mercy. It gets complicated again. I don't know if I have enough time to go into it. But the fact of the matter is, nobody else, no other spiritual leader of the main religions, of the world's biggest and most predominant religions, none of them ever came and said, hey, I'm God. I'm the Son of God. I've come to save you. You need to look at me. They all came and did something different than that. They came and said, I'm not the one. I only point the way. I found this tablet. Whatever it is, however it is, none of them live up to the claims of Jesus. And that's part of the reason why he's so hated. And yet part of the reason why even those who are from other faiths are drawn to him. There's a difference about what he says and who he says he is. It's a different story completely. I read the Old Testament compared to just about... We all long for judgment. I spoke about judgment last time in Mercy, and it got a little cloudy, what I was saying. And I'd love to clear that up. It's not... I don't think I have time right now to do that, but maybe. The fact of the matter is, is we all long for justice. We long for justice. And without judgment, there is no justice. So we talk about love, love, love. We crave justice. I mean, what's happening in the U.S., Black Lives Matter, there's a desire for justice, there's this craving for justice. Or Hamas and Israel, calling for justice. And the fact is that there is a judgment. There has to be a judgment. This is another thing that Christians get burned for. They get slagged for. This believing in a judgment. How can a loving God judge? Well, He has to. If there's no judgment, then what hope is there? You don't have any hope. The world has no hope. If there's no judgment, there's no way for justice. So if there is judgment, what happens then? Well then, if there is judgment, then there's no hope for me. I know that I don't live up to my own standards. Never mind other people's standards. That's what I was talking about last time when I said I'm not a good father. I'm not a good husband. I'm not a good friend. In my life, there's times where I'm a good father, I'm a good friend, and I'm a good husband. But there's times when I'm not. And one time, one time of not being all that I need to be in any of those roles, judgment is required. Judgment is required for justice to take place. That is the point. So basically, here Jesus is saying, I didn't come to bring peace. He does bring peace. When you find out who He is, when you discover who He is and enter into a relationship with Him, that's when the peace comes. And it's not, the exclusivity doesn't, it's not a catalyst for arrogance. Because of what I just said, I require that I be judged. So this mercy thing, this is, when I said last time, someone has to pay, that's why Jesus came. That was the fire to cast judgment, to bring fire upon the earth. That's what fire in the Old Testament, if you read it, and even in the New Testament, when they talk about fire, it's for purification, it's for cleansing, it's for judgment. It's for judgment. It signifies judgment. So when you understand these things, it has to affect you. So back to that thing I said last time, which I should probably say every time, if there's anything in what I say, and it's not me, it's the Holy Spirit that's pulling you, drawing you, tugging on you. I said piercing you last time. If there's anything that rings true in this, then you need to look at it. You need to examine it. Put aside any presuppositions you have about what Christianity is, what Jesus taught, what churches teach, what anybody teaches. There's good stuff in the churches. I'm not slagging the churches. Put a bunch of imperfect people together and you're going to have, back to what I talked about being in grade 7, all the 13-year-olds all together locked up in a room. You've got the same thing in churches. You've got the same thing in communities. You've got the same thing. So some way, somehow, you've got to find a way to live and exist in peace, in that peace. And it's an inner peace. You have to have it on the inside because there is going to be no outer peace. We can call peace, peace, peace. We can come up with solutions like socialism or Marxism or capitalism or whatever. Those things are ideas and they have some basis in truth maybe and they have some positive things going for them but they're not the truth. There's one the truth, according to Jesus. And either he's a liar or a lunatic or he's God because he said he was God. So either he's a liar because he said he was God or he's just plain crazy. Like, what was that guy, Jones, Jonestown. He said he was Christ returned. That's not the world's major religions. That's what happens to people who claim to be God. They go crazy. They're lunatics. Jesus changed the world. He changed. I talked about Christendom. He changed the world. So if he changed the world, then we must all be lunatics if he's a lunatic because we all bought into it. I mean, there's so many critical thinking arguments to go through here. Like, if you have any questions you want to talk to me about into this stuff, please contact them. I'm anxious to talk about it. Anyway, I guess that's it. I don't know how much time I spent here, probably more than 15 minutes. I'm going to do a song, and, again, I don't know which one. It will be an original. So that's number 12. Number 13 is next. And I will share more with you next time. Again, thank you. Until next time. Thank you. Thank you. Said I think I'll try the coast. You lived in cities and you lived on farms. Still have found what you want the most. Don't you talk to the Lord. He'll hear you when you call his name. He'll never leave or forsake you, no. Your life will never be the same. I was there in this wandering mind. Seeking, looking, trying to fill my heart with fire. But on my own I was a dying, drowning man. I did my best. I said I'd do the best I can. Even then I knew there wasn't quite enough. Something else inside of me had to change. I felt like a tulip, I was like a diamond in the rough. But God told me how, Lord, can my new life be arranged. I said I'd talk to the Lord. He heard me when I called his name. He'll never leave or forsake me, no. My life will never be the same. That's why I'll sing praises to my God. Oh, the light and the life of the world. Who was and is and is to come. The Father, Spirit, and the Son. There in your heart's despair you heard the words I sang. There in the truth you know there's healing for your pain. But out of fear you thought you won't go any farther. And as you wait, my friend, it only gets much harder. Why don't you talk to the Lord? He'll hear you when you call His name. He'll never leave or forsake you, no. He'll be a very close friend. I said, why don't you talk to the Lord? Oh, He'll hear you when you call His name. He'll never leave or forsake you, no. Your life will never be the same. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh