Preview Chapter Two
JESUS FREAK
Professional lighting concerns itself with the subjects of illumination, color, mood, filters, shadow, and creating definite visual or photonic effects. This is particularly important in spaces that are purpose built. The lighting demands in a church are quite different from those in a nightclub or the flat panel cockpit displays in a jet fighter. The use of shadow is one of the more difficult subjects to master in lighting. Likewise, in Spirituality we must concern ourselves with the complex, shadow side of Life if we are to consider the human condition in its fullness. We must consider mood and colors in Spirituality, for much of life is about its mood and colors.
In terms of the early coloring of my life, I grew up in the usual dysfunctional, lower middle class suburban home. This description is a cliché when we consider Buddha’s description of human life as suffering. There is no such thing as an ideal childhood. Some children have better parents and families than others, but no childhood is perfect or ideal. Children who are heavily sheltered often have a hard time becoming young adults. I have an older brother and a younger sister. My parents did not shelter us from the harshness of life. In some ways, it made us stronger as children and adults. I have always considered myself a junkyard dog: I am emotionally resilient and can live with virtually nothing. This is part of the legacy of my childhood. I know how to be poor and how to have money. The optimal condition for me is to live below my means and put money in the bank. I do not believe in possessions or status. I have lived in Sherman Oaks and now live in Quartz Hill, a small town in the foothills of the Mojave Desert. I do not have a luxury address, but I am surrounded by vast open land and tranquility.
My hometown is Anaheim, California by way of Norwalk. My parents were neglectful in many ways because they were poor. For example, no one in my family ever had any dental work. We did not have the money. I had to take a year out of college when I was nineteen. I worked in a factory to pay thousands of dollars for badly needed dental work. My dad had all of his teeth pulled when he was in his 20’s due to dental disease. I did not want dentures in my 20’s. Because I worked a flow solder machine for a year at the old Altec Lansing factory in Anaheim for a year, I saved my teeth. My parents never forced any religious or political beliefs upon me because they did not have any. They never had any ambitions beyond surviving paycheck to paycheck. They expected their children to be self reliant. My parents’ only expectations for me were that I not get myself arrested, not get a girl pregnant before I was eighteen, and that I graduate high school. I am proud to say that I succeeded in meeting two of their three modest expectations.
THE CUCKOO CLOCK
My father was a highly skilled machinist, gunsmith, and artisan who owned an incredible array of exquisite and expensive tools. My father worked hard, but his drinking and other interests left us with little money. He was a classic old world craftsman and machinist who taught me meticulous attention to detail. The first complex object I ever took apart as a kid was an old cuckoo clock that had broken.
My mother had obtained the cuckoo clock by saving and redeeming ten books of Blue Chip stamps. These stamps were an old version of credit card points. Many stores gave out Blue Chip stamps when people purchased groceries and other goods. You had to lick and paste the stamps into these little books. You could then redeem the books for goods at the Blue Chip stamp stores. There were also Green Stamps, but they were not as popular. My mother would only shop at stores that gave out Blue Chip stamps.
I watched the cuckoo clock operating high upon the wall of our living room as a child. I was frustrated by having to wait to see the bird come out each hour. Noon delighted me the most with the cuckoo bird’s twelve trips in and out of its door. The clock quit working one day and it was eventually taken down off the wall. My dad gave me the clock to take apart in his garage. His garage was a special place, for it allowed my brother and me to learn the careful use of fine tools.
I have always had tremendous dexterity with my eyes and hands when it comes to intricate work. I remember carefully disassembling the cuckoo’s house. I first removed the roof followed by the back wall and sidewalls. This allowed me to see the intricate and complex pendulum-driven gear works. Using jeweler’s screwdrivers and a Zeiss loop, I took apart the gears of the clock. Finally, I had reduced the clock down to the central mechanism that contained the cuckoo bird and its door. This cuckoo was what I was really after. I must have played with the cuckoo mechanism for an hour. I studied the slide mechanism upon which the cuckoo moved and pivoted. I examined the way in which the slide mechanism opened the door and how a spring closed the door.
The wholly unexpected chance to finally open it up and reveal it inner workings was like seeing some part of a mysterious world. Kids usually never get to see inside the house where the cuckoo bird lives, but I did. This episode was an early indicator of my love of tools, detail, design, engineering, manufacturing, and deconstruction.
MYSTIC CHILD
I was born a Mystic. I define a Mystic as someone who natively understands the spiritual aspects of life. My first memory in this life was of waking up from my immediate past life where I had been shot and killed. There have been numerous reports in the media about very young children in India telling their parents about their past lives. This is what happened to me when I was two years old. However, I was born in 1957 into a Judeo-Christian America where recalling past lives was not socially permitted. In America, topics such as reincarnation were restricted to occult societies and private home groups. I recalled numerous past lives in my childhood. I experienced one of my past lives as a high society woman. In another past life, I was a Confederate spy who was hanged from a tree by Union troops. It is easy to dismiss the imagination of children, but during my past life recalls, my consciousness would shift for a short time. I would enter into a much higher state of adult consciousness and understanding. For example, in the first event I clearly realized that the worst had happened and that I had been born into a new body. These short windows of intense, clear recall opened and closed spontaneously. As each episode began to withdraw from my consciousness, I would try to grab it and keep it open. Yet, it disappeared and I invariably dropped back down into the state of a child. Nevertheless, the vivid impressions had been indelibly made upon me.
As a child, I experienced astral projection and all of the sounds, colors, and various subtle phenomena that go with it. I also saw ghosts and spirits. These apparitions appeared in gauzy human form or as colored, pixilated light bodies. I once saw a very tall witch in this pixilated form. She was standing in my bedroom at night. I was not afraid of her, nor did I like her. I looked at her, tried to read her thoughts, and got nothing. She faded away into colored pixels. I generally kept very secret about what was happening to me. When I tried to tell my parents, they grew scared and angry. I naturally understood that I was on my own when it came to these experiences. My mystical childhood was hardly an idealized Harry Potter story. Rather, it was frustrating and elusive and began to darken when I was eleven and twelve years old. The energy field around me became incredibly negative as I exited childhood. The psychic intensity began to increase as I approached puberty. My only escape was in drawing and reading. I learned to read when I was six and had developed a high reading comprehension by the time I was in sixth grade. Books and newspapers were a definite conduit for me to learn about the world. I was frustrated by the limited amount of books in the school library. Moreover, my mother was imposed serious restrictions on what books I could and could not check out from the public library.
Coincident with this sense of darkness, my father took a new job and we moved from Norwalk to Anaheim in 1968. We moved into a bad neighborhood. By my fifteenth birthday in 1972, I had been arrested for possession of marijuana and had four friends who had died. Three of them had been shot to death in separate incidents, and one had drowned in the turbulent Colorado River when he was high on drugs. I was shattered by seeing death up close and personal at an early age. When one is young and has friends murdered or killed, it is quite different from the murders one reads about in the newspaper, hears on the news, or sees enacted in television and movies. These deaths forced me to consider the vulnerability of life and the inevitability of death.
I grew up in a drug neighborhood in Anaheim where one could easily buy marijuana; kenebanol; magic mushrooms; speed; heroin; and various forms of LSD known as windowpane acid, blotter acid, or, when used on pictures of Mickey Mouse, “Mickey Mouse acid.” We lived near Disneyland and so the Stoners honored Mickey in this way, much to the chagrin of the Disney Corporation. We also drank Coors, Ripple, Spanada, Boone’s Farm, and other cheap California table wines that came in bottles that could be used as rustic candleholders after drinking the contents. I preferred pot because there was no hangover. The cigarette of choice was Marlboro Red in the box, the “hard pack” as it is called. Sexual promiscuity was the order of the day. “V.D.” was the worst of the STD’s and it was curable with penicillin. My neighborhood was sex, drugs, rock and roll as the old saw describes it.
The parents in our neighborhood were tragically unaware. Most of the parents were busy, stressed, and distant; caught up in work, divorces, and affairs; self-medicated into oblivion on booze and prescription drugs, they allowed their kids to raise themselves. A few parents were exceptions; these people now stand out to me as trying to help the kids who had absent parents. When I was arrested at fourteen years of age, my parents were naturally infuriated and somewhat shocked. They screamed at me and put me on restriction, but all of this faded away after a few weeks. I was on probation for six months and took extra care not to get myself arrested or I would have had to finish my probation in Juvenile Hall. Having stayed there for a short time after my arrest by the Anaheim Police Department, I got the point. I had no desire to be incarcerated again.
With certain exceptions for arrests or mandatory family events, we remained a closed group in our drug gang and had very little contact with our parents. They usually bought our lies with a shrug. The gang was our world and our protection. Within or gang we had order, safety, rules, a hierarchy, and we cared for each other as brothers and sisters. This was suburban America in 1973 for many young people and my story could be repeated millions of times over. It can still be repeated by many of today’s young people.
My outer world was compounded by the vivid and intense inner spiritual experiences I had experienced since I was a very small child. Some of these experiences had to do with my immediate past life. I lacked the psychological and spiritual ability to deal with these experiences, some of which involved spontaneous manifestations of what I would later learn to describe as the Kundalini power. There were places in America for people like me, but I was not quite ready to run away to tune in, turn on, and drop out to one of the nearby communes in the mountains around Laguna Beach, Silverado Canyon, the San Bernardino Mountains, or out in the Mojave Desert. These communes offered the promise of sex, drugs, drug-mysticism, New Age, Satan worship, and other adventures.
I liked to walk along the railroad tracks that paralleled Interstate 5 in Anaheim when I ditched school. Sometimes I hopped into an open boxcar and rode south to Santa Ana or Oceanside. As I did not have friends who liked catching out, I reluctantly gave it up because it is too dangerous to do alone. I jumped out of a boxcar once and landed hard. I realized that if I had broken my leg, or worse, there was no one around to help. I had also heard stories of people being killed trainhopping. The risks outweighed the rewards, so I stopped trainhopping and stuck to walking the tracks. I also body surfed, explored the old mines on Saddleback Mountain, or went rock climbing out at Joshua Tree.
When I was walking the tracks, I would invariably run into another hippie, a street person, or a veteran who had not gotten their life back together after returning from Viet Nam. These people were just out walking the tracks like me. The friendly people would walk and talk with me. The people who were disturbed would shoot me a death look and move on. I never had any problems back then, but I damned sure avoided the hardcore trainhoppers. These were the older men whom you might call hobos. They could be big trouble. There are unwritten rules. The trainhoppers “own” the rails and you have to get out of their way or pay them tribute, usually all of your money. The trainhoppers are only afraid of the railroad bulls, for the bulls actually own the rails and are tough people. The bulls would never hassle people walking the tracks because they were in search of trainhoppers. Some bulls would warn me that I could get beat up or killed by the hobos, but I could outrun hobos and did a few times. I was young, slender, fast, and ran like a springbok. In college, I would take up distance running as a better way to lose myself. I ran mindlessly mile after mile like Forest Gump. Running got me off the tracks and onto the running and biking track that extended for miles along the Santa Ana River. I would run from near Yorba Linda to the ocean. I never wanted to stop.
The people I talked to on the tracks had typically been through one commune or another and they usually warned me against going anywhere near them. These communes were gritty, prone to theft and violence, and never delivered the Nirvana they promised. There were also horror stories coming out the Hare Krishna communes, Tony and Susan Alamo’s group homes, and of course the infamous Children of God. The central factor that predisposed me against running away to a commune was the gruesomeness of the Manson Family murders. I was only eleven when the murders happened, but the violent manner of the murders and the cult aspect of the Manson Family shocked the world. Anything associated with cults or group homes scared me. I stayed at a few of the early Calvary group homes here and there, perhaps if it was late and I wanted to crash. I have always been a vagabond, but I am particular about where I stay. As I got older and began to travel a great deal on business, fine hotels became my choice. Even then, life on the road is lonely.
I had the usual problems, some difficulties with my parents, and generally survived by working on my art, smoking pot, and ditching school. I was a chronic truant for several years because I saw no point in attending school. My truancy was abetted by “flexible scheduling” an educational experiment in the 1970s that was a ticket to ditch school. I ditched school every possible day because school was intolerable to me. I preferred life on the streets or smoking pot at someone’s house whose parents were at work. Smoking pot and engaging in philosophical conversations while listening to Led Zeppelin and the other great bands of the era was its own form of education. I am not defending it as a good form of education; I am rather earnestly establishing my background.
My father purchased many of the popular books of the period that were concerned with Edgar Cayce, the pyramids, UFO’s, extraterrestrials, ghosts and haunting, and the occult. He read the books, but he made sure to leave them lying around for me to read. My father did not know how to handle my psychic energy. He used the books as a way to help me figure things out for myself. We would sometimes discuss esoteric topics, but my father was somewhat of a closed book.
One day my father brought home a copy of The Late Great Planet Earth. Written by Hal Lindsey, this 1970’s bestseller discussed bible prophecy. The dark mood of the book, coupled with its certainty about where world events were heading, shocked me. Hal Lindsey’s certainty about Satan made me question if the intense psychic experiences I had were of Satan. I wondered if becoming a Christian would turn off the dark energy, dreams, and experiences. I laid aside The Late Great Planet Earth. Still, every time I watched the news or read the paper, Lindsay’s argument that events in the USSR, Israel, and the Middle East were heading towards Armageddon haunted me.
I seriously thought about the End of the World. Having been born into the Cold War and its ever-present threat of thermonuclear annihilation between the US and the USSR had made me into somewhat of a fatalist. Baby boomers remember the duck and cover drills, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Viet Nam, and the assassinations of President Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. The world in which we grew up was inherently Apocalyptic. Perhaps this is partially explains why my generation grew up with an irresponsible appetite for instant gratification, the future costs be damned. We grew up as doomed children on a steady diet of US propaganda and the horrors of Viet Nam.
THE END OF THE WORLD
On April 1, 1973, I went, and quite dramatically so, from being a Dark Stoner to a Christian in one evening. It was a balmy spring evening. My friend and classmate Barbara, who is still one of my dearest friends, had invited me to attend evening service at Melodyland Christian Center in Anaheim. Hal Lindsey, author of The Late Great Planet Earth, was speaking. I decided to attend after having read the book a few months earlier. The book painted a disturbing portrait and made a case for the Rapture happening sooner than later. I was astonished because the scenario Lindsay outlined worked numerically based upon 1948. Although Lindsey never came out and said so, the clear implication of his book was that a pre-tribulation Rapture had to happen by 1981 if we allow that a biblical generation is forty years.
I had hair down past my shoulders. My Levis were holed at the knees and my t-shirt had a peace symbol on it. My biker boots and bad attitude matched. I was out of place in Melodyland, but Melodyland did not care. The atmosphere was electric. Hal Lindsay delivered a riveting sermon about how current events aligned perfectly to biblical prophecies concerning the end of the world. After Lindsay spoke, he gave the invitation to accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior.
I took that long, mesmerizing walk down one of the aisles and was one of many people to gather around Melodyland’s circular stage, for the church had originally been designed and built as a “theater in the round.” I felt drawn by the Spirit. After repeating the sinner's prayer, we were asked to go into a back room. "Your friends will wait for you," Pastor Ralph Wilkerson assured us as we were shepherded into the prayer room by church members who worked with new converts. Hal Lindsay came back into the room and spoke to us briefly about the eternal importance of the decision we had just made, and then a counselor attended to each of us "babes in Christ.”
A very kindly, older black man, a member of
Melodyland, had sat down next to me. After Hal Lindsay concluded his
remarks and left the room, the Brother turned to me, placed his hand on
my shoulder, and said that I needed to receive the "Baptism of the Holy
Spirit.” Upon receiving it, he instructed, I would speak in tongues. He
laid his hand on my forehead and began praying, he urged me to speak,
"as the Spirit gives you utterance." I began speaking in a language I
did not understand. I had visions of spirits rising up from their graves
to meet Jesus in the rapture.
This event was one of the most spiritually luxurious and liberating
moments in my entire life and remains so. That I had a Brother to guide
me was crucial.
After I had come back from Heaven, my new Brother in Christ explained some of what had happened. Moments after this, I was invited to receive water baptism. Water baptism is symbolic of the old sinful “self” dying as it is put under the water, and the new “I-am-in-Christ” coming up out of the water. How could I say no? I donned the ceremonial white robe, stood in line, and finally descended into the pool at about 10:30 p.m. I received water baptism and came up out of the waters speaking in tongues. Reverend Noel Weiss, a completed Jew, performed the ceremony.
In one evening, I had gone from an alienated youth to a spirit-baptized saint who spoke in tongues. I had undergone mystical experiences, found the truth, and my name was added to the lamb's book of life. The “Spirit” had moved upon me in the same way as when Jesus met two teenage brothers named James and John who worked with their family as fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus told James and John to follow him. Recognizing him to be the Lord, they put down their fishing nets, left their family, and followed Jesus. It was like that for me when I encountered Christ. I eagerly anticipated the Rapture -- and my friends Barbara and Lew had indeed waited for me.
I knew Jesus had called me. I put aside everything to follow the Lord. Back then, there was a high social cost, a stigma, attached to becoming a Christian in drug culture that hated authority, religion, society, and everything else. The drug culture makes people hard and cold at a young age because addiction is cruel; money is everything; and sex and violence comes easily.
Many of my friends dismissed me as a “Jesus Freak” following my conversion and wanted nothing to do with me. I stopped doing drugs and slowly found new Christian friends. It was hard for me at high school due to my reputation as a Stoner. My old Stoner friends were embarrassed to be seen with me, and I understood this. Nevertheless, they were still good to me in private and I appreciated it. I still cared about them. However, the kids who had grown up as Christians were afraid of me due to my past. They could not relate to someone with my drug background. Likewise, I could not relate to their timidity. Oden Fong, who became the front man for Mustard Seed Faith and then a prominent pastor, tells an incredible story about his pre-Christian involvement in drugs and drugs sales in south Orange County. His video is worth watching to get a sense of the era, and the general scene, in which I grew up in.
I count myself fortunate to have witnessed the rise of Calvary Chapel; Melodyland; the Crystal Cathedral; The Vineyard; The Church on the Way; The Local Church; and so many other churches and ministries. There was such a wealth of Christian ministries happening in Orange County in the 1970’s that, looking back on it, one doubts that it could ever happen again. It was a singular phenomenon of time, place, and people. I attended so many churches just to witness the many ways in which the “Spirit” was working. The intensity, energy, and enthusiasm of the Jesus People and the Charismatic’s in Orange County in the 1970’s offered a strong immersion into Christian Myth-Reality. Myth shapes and drives human perception and the sense of Reality. Many modern people think they are immune from mythical influences. They are not. None of us are.
Colonial Bible Church was my church home in my Christian years. Nevertheless, I still attended Calvary Chapel, Melodyland, The Vineyard, and many other churches. My pastor, and I love and respect the man and still do, quietly rebuked me more than once for “church hopping” due to my excursions to other churches. Like walking the railroad tracks, I enjoyed faith healing rallies and the other byways of the Christian scene back then. One never knew what was going to happen next. Many people were praying for John Lennon to accept Jesus as his personal savior. Jesus People reasoned that if we could just “get John” that a global revival would become inevitable.
I loved Calvary Chapel because it offered a unique form of New Testament discipleship and fellowship. Chuck Smith set high standards while ensuring that unimportant things not get in the way as they did at other churches. Women could dress like hippie chicks and the men like bikers or hippies. Outward appearance did not matter. What mattered to Papa Chuck was that you were now a disciple of Christ and he expected you to conduct yourself as such. This meant loving your neighbor as yourself; studying the scriptures; and cleaning up your life. Lonnie Frisbee, Greg Laurie, and Tom Stipe stood out from the crowd to emerge as leaders.
“Christian Rock” emerged as distinct musical genre. The genre was best exemplified by the Christian super-group Love Song. Knott’s Berry Farm hosted the first “Long Song Festival” in October 1973. Christian music events became an annual happening at Knott’s and many other venues throughout the US, Europe, and Australia. In many ways, this first concert marked the recognition of Christian Rock and the Jesus People by the mainstream Christians in Orange County. I attended this event for several years in a row with my high school girlfriend Marisa and our friends.
My Jesus Person experience included the Saturday night concerts at Calvary Chapel; the Knott’s Jesus People events; the Christian coffee shops like the Soul Hut in Stanton; street evangelism; and working with the Gifts of the Spirit. I was a street preacher and witnessed in popular local places such as the beautiful Hillcrest Park in Fullerton, Hollywood Boulevard, or at the local beaches. I sometimes went street preaching alone and went with friends at other times.
Street preaching puts you onto the streets in the midst of the human condition. Most people told me that they did not like Jesus Freaks and told me to leave them alone. Still, there were people who were glad to talk someone about their experiences. I quickly learned that street people could teach me a great deal about real life. Indeed, I learned far more from my prospective converts than they ever learned from me. They had all heard the Gospel from other street preachers, in prisons or jails, soup kitchens, or had grown up in churches. As a street preacher, I was able to relate to people out in the world on the level of drug use, anti-authority, and anti-establishment because that was the Hippie/Stoner zeitgeist of the times and I was caught up into it. This was a great time to be both lost and found as is the paradox of Christian salvation. On the streets, I sometimes backslid when someone offered me one “one toke over the line” as Brewer & Shipley had sung. Being a stoned street preacher is a very unusual experience. It made me wonder if Jesus got high.
The Jesus People movement that started at Calvary Chapel coincided with the Charismatic Renewal that had important roots in Melodyland Christian Center. The Jesus People movement attracted young people that could not possibly be reached by the old, mainline churches that had dress codes, frowned upon rock music and pop culture in general, and were not open to spiritual manifestations such as speaking in tongues. The Charismatic Renewal tended to attract older members of the stale mainline churches who were open to a vibrant and deeply experiential form of worship and praise that included speaking in tongues, healing, and the other gifts of the Spirit. Both of these movements were dynamic, eclectic, and improvisational in many respects.
By 1976, the Jesus People and Charismatic movements had cooled off significantly. Both new and existing churches in Southern California and elsewhere were beginning to pour their literal and spiritual concrete foundations for the future. Doctrine was used to divide and differentiate people in a determined competition for the power and money that came by building a large church membership. The era of the Megachurch, the Electronic Church, and global religious broadcasting was dawning. Christians were beginning to play hardball with each other; they were starting to play for keeps....