Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Gayle and the Great "Magic"

"The real presence of Jesus in our lives -- and His power to re-shape us -- is the point of the Gospel. It is not an historical document; it is the Word of God to us: Take and eat, and be transformed." - Gayle Nolan OneBirdWatching.blogspot.com

Gayle is quite an accomplished bible scholar and amazing teacher. In fact, my daughter has given Gayle credit for teaching her a new way to pray. I was brought up in a very letter-of-the-law religion. My mother and I taught rote prayers, as was the way of our religion. Believing that we could hear God was simply arrogant. We were certainly never to approach God in any manner other than abject fear, preferably through an intermediary.

Gayle was the "religion" teacher at a small private school at which her husband was head master. I credit my long-term friendship with Gayle for planting the seeds of the enormous faith my daughter has and seems to be passing on to her two daughters. My daughter says that Ms. Gayle taught them that the way to pray was to go and sit silently under a tree and "listen." What a concept, but Gayle was always a renegade, like that.

What a blessing it is in my life that I have been able to expose my children to so many who radiate their Sacred Spirits from the very marrow of their bones outward into the universe. Gayle absorbs the gospels and many other sacred scriptures into her body like most of us absorb nutrients from our physical food. She then spreads the product of her "digestion" process in her words and her deeds. I have always been convinced that Gayle thought her children and husband should be able to live on their faith alone. The words, I could live on, but families insist on being fed physical food.

Many is the day that Gayle's hungry husband would come home after working and attending evening classes to find the two of us sitting at her kitchen table. In the words of the song "The house was dark and the pots were cold." Bless him, he never banned me from their home. I could have at least cooked while we talked, but I was much too mesmerized by Gayle's views of faith and her God. Thankfully, manna would regularly fall from heaven, in the form of a pot of vegetable soup from Gayle's mama's kitchen.

Her mother, unlike Gayle was a no-nonsense kind of teacher and woman of great faith. Imagine what her reaction must have been when she would walk into Gayle's house to find her three grandchildren dressed in super hero and fairy princess garb, dancing on the coffee table and the window sills. Gayle called these her children's "magic years."

I have never heard Gayle or her very faith-filled husband proselytize; they simply allow others into their aura, and it spreads their faith. In the words of another song, their version of God "walks with me, and talks with me, and tells me I am his own." I like this kind of Christianity, no matter what a person's "religion." With people who can hear The Sacred Spirit calling, all the years seem to be "magic."