On this Sunday afternoon, as I try to navigate through the muck, devastations and other aftermath of what most rational people might term a serious string of bad luck – that my neighbor, acutely aware of the various sequences of my seeming bad luck, especially with vehicles, that I’ve endured here over the past two years, actually agreed with me the other night on the phone, using a different word that though I’ve heard before, is not in my typical vocabulary, and I had actually read in an article regarding such dark things, using that term, in recent days.
She said, “I do think you might be under a HEX!”1
Is it appropriate to make dark-humored jokes (and funny illustrations that also express my own spiritual spine) about potentially being under some (familiar spirit?) family “hex?”
I suppose, if I do this thing, I might find out 😀
*ducking lightning bolts here!*
Ha!
Though I was under a serious oppressive weight when I called to check in on them earlier this week, part of me wanted to smile at her use of the term hex, which as I understand it, would be a term used in this region of the Pennsylvania Dutch! In other places of the world, this universal and somewhat feared practice goes by other names.
The Old Testament specifically forbids the practice of witchcraft and necromancy. While arguably we all can put in our two cents about where the line is drawn in some of these things, the fact remains that there are actual spiritual dark forces in this world, seeking our destruction and that of those we hold dear.
The Wizard of Oz is one of my favorite films, and this past week I finished up a studio caricature gift for George Mason University with the subject depicted as a good witch on a yellow brick road…based on information given me to form a scene. She likes costumes, performed “magic” in her position she left…and more!
While some people argue over the reading of Harry Potter (and I’m not going there, since I have no solid opinion on that at the moment) or possibly the opening of a Chinese Fortune Cookie, the usage of Pagan Christmas Trees and Easter Eggs, or speaking cultural lingo and colloquialisms with historic roots of references…maybe even listening to the amazing jazzy-blues piece “I Put a Spell on You!” or…my favorite…as a new Christian someone told me the lyrics in “Scarborough Fair” (This link with the song’s history is great) were a witch’s spell…a fact I researched a few months ago before deciding whether I should paint them in my 70’s retro-in-progress informal Air B & B…
I read that Scarborough Fair was a Renaissance festival that drew lovers to attend, and the cultural meanings attached to those specific herbs:
Parsley: Comfort
Sage: Strength
Rosemary: Love
Thyme: Courage
So in a sense, the song is a beautiful, haunting song about a lost true love, and perhaps in some sense, references to some innocuous “love spell.”
I don’t have any real issue with this type of creative appropriation of very human feelings, experiences, culture and more.
What I do have an issue with is a number of increasingly perceived evils that have befallen me and my loved ones. I will do and pray anything I sense from Jesus to do and pray in order for my children, my children’s children, and their children’s children and beyond to live within the beautiful Shalom God seeks for all of our lives.
I absolutely have an issue with are a few things I’m not willing to write publicly, which are both through facts told me at various times and my own experiential discernments from my Lord, Jesus. If anyone wishes to argue with me on this, I would send them to study a number of Old and New Testament texts, given to us, that we might wade through with discernment, and as the writer of Psalm 119:11 said, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
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So, there are a number of blog drafts I’ve been trying to form on this topic, that I’m having trouble wading through. Of course. Squeezing in writing is something I do currently instead of watching TV and other things, or simply when I just need to do this for my own empowerment and processing.
One piece was started in Buckhannon, WV over the July 4th weekend…titled something like “It’s Time to Talk About the Linger Luck!”
The Linger Luck is a term I’ve heard over the years from various family members. Part of my exploration during my weekend getaway to the earth naval of my mother’s family, was to inquire in various ways about any known town folklore and the actual practicing of witchcraft. There were just a number of reasons, this topic interested me.
The Old Testament does speak of the ongoing process – a butterfly effect if you will imagine – of the sins of the fathers being visited to the third and fourth generations. While Jesus has broken the curse, we receive these benefits as we seek to faithfully follow Him and His words and ways.
You shall not bow down to them or serve them;
for I the Lord your God am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children
to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,
Deuteronomy 5:9 (ESV)
I don’t quite know what this means, and anyone who says with any certainty what it means or does not mean, probably also does not know. It is my belief it is some combination of intentional sins of commission, sins of omission, born out of our human condition and weaknesses, environmental dysfunction (Oh…and how is this title? “They Were Like the Hatfields and McCoys All Rolled into One Sibling Group”) … and also biological genetics including but not limited to both the pros and cons of intelligence, creativity and even body chemistry, possibly, at least to some small-factored degree.
I tend to lean more heavily on the environmental, development theories found in the studies of Sociology, Abnormal Psychology and Family Systems (I had a decent amount of these course in college) -basically environmental factors, but especially, the spiritual heritage of a family is a greatly significant factor, in my mind.
On Sunday, July 3, I had the privilege of attending a service at the Reger Chapel, a United Methodist Congregation and the church where my grandparents are buried, along with this particular sibling, Carter. I am interested in eventually researching public records concerning him and some other things referenced in her diary which might possibly be verified through various public or other institutional records, as my mother references several things (now clues of sorts to me…) in her diaries from 1946 that he was “particularly violent” with her during an incident that occurred in April of that year involving my mother and at least three other family members (siblings) and potentially, her father, indirectly.
For those following my writings, more written here Vindicating Margaret and Carter Was Particularly “Violent” Toward Me.
I have had an increasing, somewhat lifelong interest in topics and movements surrounding various forms of violences, and the biblical tension between both Jesus’ call to what could arguably be termed total non-violence to the possibly appropriate (in some cases) responses to very real violence with needed and reasonable self-defense. That is too huge of a conversation, beyond the scope of this piece.
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I don’t think I walked away from Buckhannon with any clear answers – one person there I spent some time with, in the local historical society where I browsed old newspapers and chit-chatted about 90 minutes, by appointment, to ask questions about life there in the 1920’s to 1940’s, and more (and yes, I bought several interesting books there and at the history museum on Sunday to give back for the gracious time spent on a Saturday with me, loaning these to one of my sons who likes folk poetry and is a tremendous reader, and appreciates the types of history and folklore books I purchased) basically said, “You are trying to document the un-documentable!” and I fully agreed, in a kind of laughing amusement, inwardly, and otherwise.
If we cannot prove or document matters of faith, how should we be expected to document matters of the demonic?
I don’t know!
There’s a popular book, God Winks, that is just one more expression of the universal, age-old idea that our God, Yahweh, expressed in Jesus on this earth, having the ability to manipulate natural occurrences so as to an individual, it appears to be some private miracle or spiritual sign, or, “God-Wink”…due to the particular sequence and timings of things that synergizes with the human’s inner thoughts/emotions/prayers-of-sorts and intersects with external circumstances and events.
I once had a really fun experience and wrote a piece about it, called “GOD-WINKS” AND THE THIRTEEN PAIRS OF CAT SOCKS.
It’s quite a fascinating thing, this faith journey!
I wonder, then, what is the converse of a “God Wink?“
Oh BTW, on my way to West Virginia, assured by my mechanic that I did NOT have any problem with my alternator (those following on FB clearly know what happened to my the evening of July 31 in heavy 495 loop traffic near a DC exit, requiring a choice between a rock-and-a-hard-place with particular and a $750 towing bill to York, PA…and…and…it’s not over yet with this new-to-me 2007 Honda Odyssey!) I happened to hear a loud crack on my windshield, as though a rock flew off the highway and hit. I saw nothing that Friday July 1, but on the 4th, at a rest stop I noticed, down near my wipers, a pretty significant crack!
Thankful State Farm replaced my whole windshield with no deductible!
What are the odds of all these annoyances that steal my time, money and more??? I think of the proverb about the “little foxes stealing the grapes!”
That would be the seemingly endless string of costly, thwarting natural happenings that simple keep happening to me…one after another…moving the goal line to my exhausting (in every way) post-divorce recovery further and further from (my) view, but not God’s view.
I suppose those would be potential manifestations in our lives of some uncanny, destructive force that seems beyond the probability of the axiom, Stuff Happens!
Ha ha…for a brief moment I think of the hilarious scene in Forrest Gump! Leave it to FG to be a fount of simple theology! One of the best lines is, “I may be a stupid man, but I know what love is!” I’ve used this in heavy theological discussions before with well-armed Calvinists (well, maybe at least in my mind…I point out that there are a lot of mental gymnastics one must do to not interpret the most common basic word “love” in a way that is in keeping with common human understandings of the phenomenon…and not just the vanilla Calvinists but the peculiar ones that debate among themselves between the Supralapsarian and the Infralapsarian views!
And yes, I remember this concept, but always need to Google to remember the exact terms…I get it wrong, recalling only “Supra” and “Super (wrong)” when it is really “Infra..”
Oh but I digress here.
Oh, and that remind me of THESE! Too funny.
Another great Forrest Gump reference is when he tells Jenny, “Sometimes there simply aren’t enough ROCKS!”
In this great scene!
Speaking of rocks, I have another blog draft title in process, somewhat, called, “Then I Threw My Rock into a Creek on Stone Coal Road.”
If I write more on this experience, it needs to be expressed after I pull together my piece called The Mirror, which is at about 90% finished and I may yet accomplish today, and that will then turn into a link.
Now live The Mirror
But for the moment, I’ll add in the video I took that day, July 4, when I dropped that rock into some creek and took another rock away along with other elements I put together (see next video)…a friend says I should read Hind’s Feet on High Places, considering my real-time-real-life usages of my own Ebenezers of sorts and the references she says exist in that book regarding metaphorical rocks.
When I was in Buckhannon, I took with me this artwork scan, of an illustration I did sometime back in June, to go with a piece I started trying to write and considered titling: NOT AFRAID OF SIXES!
I will probably this artwork with a more formed blog piece, eventually, but here is a sneak peak!
I’m kinda proud that I thought to make my poker face, playing cards with some devil, having squinted eyes that look like a pair of the Christian Fish Symbols, and wearing a Cross on my neck! (This little cartoon character of me began in 2006 and continues, in some of my illustrations that go with various life stories and other writings). The first piece it was used in is this piece Crime and Punishment of the Problem Child.
On another note here, below is a series of photos taken in a Chinese Restaurant on Saturday, July 2nd, in Buckhannon, WV. While I am not superstitious, I do believe God can use anything we might find some humor or other encouragement in…to “wink” at us, so-to-speak. I actually have a interesting collection of fortune cookie papers I had taped to my old computer monitor...interestingly timed statements I retrieved out of horrible dried cookies I don’t like to actually eat, during the past several years!
As I sat there alone, doing this thing, before opening the cookie, since I had just come from discussions with two locals in Main Street Buckhannon phishing for any clues to local practices and especially, what it might mean for my grandmother, Mary Effie Carter Linger, to be known in that town as a “troublemaker.” (One woman I spoke with at an art gallery, casually, speculated that in the 1920’s a woman who was known as a “troublemaker” might have meant she was outspoken. I suppose that is one possibility…)
This idea that my grandmother was known as a “troublemaker” was something my dear Aunt Daisy told me many years ago when I was in my twenties. She seemed to be the best source for questions I had surrounding my mother’s early life.
The idea that my grandfather kept my grandmother pregnant so she wouldn’t go into town and “cause trouble” (something I recall my aunt telling me back then, along with some other tidbits about my mother’s early years and such – my mother was the tenth child and raised her first three years by a spinster Aunt Biddie, as I recall my mother naming her, and returned to the family at age three, after her mother had some type of breakdown) is quite a fascinating one, in some respects, but I’m not sure I “buy that” theory, currently, for a number of reasons.
Having ten children in those days doesn’t seem to be some panacea to keep a woman too busy to cause trouble in town – again – whatever this may have meant to those who have repeated this idea to me; it was more than typical at the time to have even larger families than ten children.
Oh, I love a good mystery and exploration, especially when it is so personal! The knowing and telling and re-telling of family heritages on both sides of my family, to me, is a holy endeavor. Truly.
And with that, the blog title I considered as I was opening my little fortune cookie there that day was, get ready…tongue-in-cheek here…“And I Had the Nerve to Open a Fortune Cookie in Buckhannon, WV!”
Cheers, and Shalom! on this Sunday afternoon here in Timbuktu, PA…um…l mean…East Berlin, PA!
Sun is shining and before this long day is over I may even get around to imagining myself as some migrant worker, ha ha…alongside my Jesus!…hopefully rapidly picking out-of-control okra, beans, tomatoes and more in the cooler evening hours yet left (oh but I did not! that will need to wait until tomorrow now)…having managed to turn back up my produce stand a storm knocked over Thursday, during this past week where I experienced a truly horrible series of vehicle events beginning around 5:30 pm Sunday night!
More on that here, …still awaiting news on the Honda, they haven’t even been able to look at it yet, and understandably…but…you just can’t make this stuff up!
Right Marley? SUPERVISOR CAT!!!
A cheerful heart is good medicine,
but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
Proverbs 17:22
1For further exploration:
Can You Stop the Cycle of Generational Trauma?
Difference Between Hex and Curse
Thank You For Reading
Please Feel Free To Express Your Thoughts Below
