re: #20 Barefoot Grin

I’ve written about it here before, but one of the ironies of our lives has been how some of the young (now 50-somethings) rich kids I went to church with became the local versions of the Christian GOP we know today and wrecked the church my parents were instrumental in maintaining. Granted, it was a centrist upper-middle class Presbyterian church, but my mom especially (and after retirement, my dad) used it to do work for the underserved in our town. My dad is a bit like Jimmy Carter. He is an engineer and still works to repair and build homes; he’s 90. Anyway, the rich members of the church were pissed off over things like gay marriage and left to build their own church (with gym and school facilities) on the outskirts of town. That’s how it happens. All over America these people want to stop paying taxes for what they don’t like and to divert the taxes they pay to their private religious/educational projects.

My Dad’s parents were much the same way when they were alive. They were RCC unlike your parents but had a lot of the same kindness towards those less off than them. Nana’s older brother was actually a parish priest for a very poor African-American community in Louisiana before and after he went off to war as a chaplain. I think Nana even though she lived a comfortable middle life when she got married to my grandfather always had a real empathy for people since she had grown up fairly poor and she had lost her mother young. I’ll always remember her greatest gift even with several grand and great grandchildren, she always fond a way to make us all feel special and loved. I think she more than anyone shaped my ideology and compassion for those less well off than me.