REPORT FROM FLAG:

Merry Christmas



As most of us know but often forget, life is chancy. During the great Schultz Fire that wiped out a mountain side and set the conditions for a flood, the local newspaper, the Arizona Daily Sun, ran an article about an earthquake fault that run along Lake Mary Road, a few yards down the hill from our house. The floods came, devastating many of the homes to the northeast of Flagstaff. We even had tornadoes come near us in Bellemont, about ten miles to the west. However, the land is gorgeous all year long with the great Ponderosa pines and the foliage of the oaks, maples, and aspens in the fall. The air is clear, and for us life has been unbelievably good.

Both Gretchen and I are doing exactly what we want to do with no one bossing us around since we have no employers. We both think this is the happiest time in our lives. In addition to her rewarding participation in Soroptomists, Gretchen is putting her creativity and sense of style to work making jewelry and selling it, too, for handsome figures. I write and edit the Master Gardening Column for the Arizona Daily Sun and tutor at the Literacy Center. We both garden in the Spring, Summer, and Autumn.

I just had my annual checkup at the VA Clinic in Bellemont and passed with flying colors. Indeed, the staff likes to see me coming because I am so healthy. Not to brag, but my LDL, that’s the bad cholesterol is now 48, a very low number. Of course, pills helped. Gretchen, too, is in good health.

Roxie, too, is fit as a fiddle for a twelve year old dog. The vet who gave her to us in Temecula, Michelle Brennan, gave her some shots that really perked up the old girl, and she now accompanies me to the Literacy Center twice a week where she has pooped only once.

We have a delightful group of neighbors with all sorts and conditions of backgrounds. They often stop by in the afternoon for a glass of wine and conversation. The nice thing is that they don’t treat either of us as “senior citizens,” a phrase, I abhor, except that Stan clears our driveway with his snow blower.

Now, for the real bragging. My granddaughter and namesake and the love of Gretchen’s life, Dana Marie, graduated with honors from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles last May and passed the California Bar last November on the first try. She’s had great support from her grandmother, Grace Marie, and her mother, Elizabeth, and stepfather, Michael, and they must be proud out of their minds. It is very nice to have a grandchild who is smarter than I am. In addition to all of that, she immediately got a job. She’s a tall California blonde beauty with blue eyes who’s as sweet as candy and smart as a whip.

We’ve also become party animals, going to two Christmas parties in the same night.

Flagstaff is a unique town. It is hochkultur and down-home, country western. The nearest big city to the West is Los Angeles, to the East Albuquerque, and to the South Phoenix. To the north, once past the Grand Canyon, there is a vast void of awe-inspiring beauty. We are close by the Hopi Reservation and cheek by jowl with the Navajo Reservation. Northern Arizona University is in town which helps raise the cognitive level of the town along with the National Park Service, the Forest Service, the US Geological Survey, a Naval Observatory, and the Lowell Observatory. Of course, we have the IRS and FBI which, so far, haven’t bothered us.

When we went to California for Thanksgiving with all the family, we relished once again California’s beauty, especially the green and color. We had a great time, and I’m happy to report that no one is in rehab or jail. Tim is retiring from the LA County Fire Dept. Paul is still surfing. Elizabeth has become a first-rate cook and is still working to pay for Dana Marie’s education. Michael is a successful business man.

Of course, the real meaning of all this is the gift of the Christ Child which calls to mind that all of it is a gift for which we should all be grateful. The longer I live the more I realize that Jesus is our Emmanuel, God with us. Amen.


Gretchen and Dana

REPORT FROM FLAG: XXXVII

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (10/13/10)

“He was a man for all the hours,” Erasmus on hearing of the death of his friend, Sir Thomas More(1535).

My older brother, Tom, died last week at 92 years of age. He suffered from Alzheimer’s disease for the last several years of his life in what has aptly been called “the long goodbye.” He died shortly after his wife, Meg, had fed him his last meal. Alzheimer’s had robbed the two of them of a long anticipated retirement and their dreams of travel.

He was a complete man. He knew his limitations and his capacities. He never tried to be anything other than who he was. He was not a dissembler. Although his business was called IMAGES, being a photographer, an artist, and a theatrical entrepreneur, he was authentic. In him there was “no variableness nor shadow of turning.”

I remember him best as an older brother during my childhood and adolescence, especially after our father, Dr. Tom, died when I was eleven. He was a beautiful physical specimen, happy, intelligent and charming. I thought of him as the ideal male. When I cut my foot on a rusty can at the beach, he carried me up a steep hill for several blocks on his back. I felt safe. In many respects, he filled the place of my father.

He was also a rebel. Our father, a residual Victorian, had plans for his sons, Tom for medicine, David for the university, and me, the youngest, for the church. David, the middle brother, and I became what he wished. Tom rebelled and chose the life of an artist which was ironic because our father was also a sometime artist and a good one, a photographer and a maker of fine jewelry, an avocation often followed by dentists. He was also a whiz at mathematics.

Of the three brothers he was the sweetest.

After I was discharged from the Army, I worked for a year on a road gang to get more money to go to college, but after that we drifted apart. I went east to college at Princeton, to theological seminary in Kentucky, and graduate school at the University of Chicago. He went on to develop a thriving career as an artist in California, becoming involved in the Hollywood community, and eventually marrying Cary Grant’s assistant. The consequences of that drift I deeply regret. I would have been enriched even more by his presence if we had been closer.

He had a rich and rewarding relationship with his wife, Meg, who remained faithful to him in his years of slippage. Such a fidelity requires courage.

A death in a family always begets regrets, but it also begets memories. At 83, I am the last of my family. The experience closest in feeling to the death of my older brother was the death of my mother, Hazel. I was with her when she died, holding her hand, talking of our life together. She would fade away, and I would raise my voice to call her back. Finally, she did not come back.

Several months later in the spring of the year, my first wife, Grace Marie, and I adopted twin boys, Tim and Paul. I sat down to write my mother a letter. A few lines into the letter I realized that she was dead in addition to realizing that there would never be anyone to whom I could report, as does a child to a mother. The full realization of the death of loved one some times takes years. An era of my life was over. So it is now. A generation has passed. There is no one left who can understand those references to the past. There is no shared laughter over the time the bed broke in two during a wrestling match or the time late at night when he pissed into a waste basket thinking it was the toilet.

When I tell anyone of my experience of listening to the radio announcing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor while playing Monopoly with my friend, Kirk Hallum, the eyes of the listener get that thousand yard stare. A teenager, I was terrified because I knew that I would eventually go to war, and the terror grew more acute as the battles raged and casualties mounted and my brother, David, was badly wounded on Iwo Jima.

We are left with memories which enrich our lives far more than any possessions we have accrued. The young live by anticipations which have no substance until they become accomplishments. The middle-aged have both anticipations and memories although the anticipations become more poignant as the likelihood of their realization diminishes.

Oddly, at 83 I still think of myself many times as middle-aged as I look forward to writing and editing the Master Gardener Column for the local newspaper, tutoring at the Literacy Center, and teaching Latin to school children, all in Country Western Flagstaff. The old are the richest of all with abundant memories and even some vicariously envied anticipations in children and grandchildren, Tim, Paul, Elizabeth, and Dana Marie. At her graduation from Loyola Law School, I found myself looking at the future through her eyes.

Ironic it is that with Gretchen we’ve adopted each other’s memories and can assimilate our histories. A good part of my wealth is in my memories of Tom who meant so much to me as a boy and an adolescent. He was a complete man. As Marc Antony said of Julius Caesar, “His life was gentle, and the elements/So mixed in him that Nature might stand up/And say to all the world, ‘This was a man.’” Amen.

REPORT FROM FLAG: XXXVI

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (3/15/10)

Gays, lesbians, cross-dressers, and trans-genders are much in the news nowadays, especially with the issue of gay and lesbian marriages. Swirling around us, these concerns have caused most of us to think about the complexity of these issues. My evolution began with a traditional rearing by conservative parents for which I am enduringly grateful. Back in the 1930's, they were for civil rights and human dignity, especially as far as race was concerned. The issue of sexual identity never arose as far as I can remember except for occasional smirks and rolled eyes about old maids living together and references to "odd couples."

I vividly remember my father chastising me for treating the black elevator operator at his office building as an inferior. "Aye, laddie, they'll be as much the Lord's children as are you and I. Now, you'll be going back to express your regrets, like a man, and offer him your hand." The elevator operator smiled broadly, shook my hand, and said, "You're Dr. Smith's son, aren't you?"

I heard about "queers" and "fairies" in school and on the streets. It remained largely in the back of my mind except for one event when I was approached in a men's room when I was about 13 in 1939. Distressed and frightened, I talked to my mother about the event. My father was dead at the time. My mother told me not to worry, went to the store where the man worked, and excoriated him. He always lowered his head after that.

The whole issue remained dormant, except for those times during puberty when sexual identification is a paramount issue as a boy has fleeting fears that he may be a "queer." That disappeared when I discovered girls.

During my military service I was generally unaware of the issue. As I look back on those years, I think in our close knit unit there was a homosexual, but nothing ever surfaced. A good bit of the time, I was fearful, being in recurring perilous situations. When people are afraid for their lives, sexual identification is not an issue. Of the five men in the unit, all are dead save for me. I understand one died of AIDS. One was killed in Selma while we were there during the civil rights marches. The other two died of alcoholism and a heart attack.

Of course, throughout the years I was approached three or four times by homosexuals, events I found unpleasant largely because I did not how to reject the approaches gracefully. I hate being awkward.

When the issue of the ordination of homosexuals arose, I opposed it, largely on the grounds of tradition. I regret my opposition because I think that my reasons were flawed and my attitude harmful. In retrospect, I think my opposition came more from my basic conservatism than anything else.

During the years I taught clinical hypnoanalysis to psychotherapists, many gays and lesbians came to the classes, and I felt at ease with them. Also, during those years I had many gay and lesbian clients which compelled me to think of them as human beings, not as peculiarities. Of course, the two years I spent as an intern at UCLA's Neuro-psychiatric Institute led me to rethink a lot of my traditional attitudes. The big change was that I began to think of them as human beings, not as defective specimens.

Indeed, for many years my office mate was a politically ardent lesbian who asked me to officiate at her wedding to another lesbian. I liked and admired her, and after a few hours thought, I agreed to do it, much to the displeasure of many people. This was about 1975. I took the marriage ceremony of the Book of Common Order of the Church of Scotland and changed the pronouns. The locale of the ceremony was spectacular on a hilltop overlooking the sea at Laguna Beach.

I continued to have many gay and lesbian clients, and sometimes I felt a little nonplussed and awkward when specific details of sexual encounters were discussed. For the most part clients tend to withhold specific information that would be useful to know, but now and then clients gave me more information than I wanted to know. However, my psychotherapist's tendency to set aside personal feelings overcame my discomfiture.

The biggest challenge occurred when a man called me several times on the telephone, never giving me his name, asking me about my attitude toward gays and changing gender. I agreed to meet him, and that meeting led me to do a lot of soul-searching. The man I met was tormented and terrified. He felt he could not remain a male but was frightened of going through the operations needed to change his gender. I knew I had to respond. I remembered my father's admonition that mercy, not rectitude, was a cardinal virtue. "Aye, at the Grand Assize 'tis best the Lord judge us a fool than a man without mercy."

The question in my mind: was the whole issue an offence to my traditional proclivities or a simple matter of correcting a mistake, as in repairing a harelip or a clubfoot. I concluded that deformities of the spirit were just as likely to happen as deformities of the flesh. I remembered the many times I heard gays and lesbians tell me that they felt the way they did from early childhood. After working through the issue with him and preparing him for the change, he disappeared. So I do not know the outcome. He remains a lingering mystery, as much of my life.

During the civil rights crises of the 1960's and 70's I was heavily involved, marching, demonstrating, preaching, and meetings all of which were accompanied with cross-burnings on my front lawn, telephonic threats late at night, beatings at the hands of a racist mob, and brief periods in jail. One time I expressed to a college student my personal distaste for many things about modern black culture. She expressed surprise and asked me how I could be for civil rights for blacks and not like some of their culture. My reply was simple. A person has rights whether or not I like them or their culture. As a matter of fact, I don't like most of modern popular culture, being old-fashioned, but that has nothing to do with human rights.

Ultimately, it comes down to an issue about oddity. How much oddity can a society tolerate? One thing for sure is that a society cannot tolerate anti-social and sociopathic oddity, as in theft and murder. While many of us may find gay and lesbian marriages, cross-dressing, and sex change operations odd, they are clearly not anti-social. It's time for a lot of people to grow up and stop dealing with their own personal fears and distastes by condemning other people. For me, it has finally come down to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He died and rose for everyone which means that every human being is worth the sacrifice of Christ. We all bear God's image and the mark of Christ. As Saint Paul said, "It is God who justifies, who is to condemn?"
Amen.

REPORT FROM FLAG: XXXVI

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (3/15/10)

Gays, lesbians, cross-dressers, and trans-genders are much in the news noadays, especially with the issue of gay and lesbian marriages. Swirling around us, these concerns have caused most of us to think about the complexity of these issues. My evolution began with a traditional rearing by conservative parents for which I am enduringly grateful. Although back in the 1930's, they were for civil rights and human dignity, especially as far as race was concerned, the issue of sexual identity never arose as far as I can remember except for occasional smirks and rolled eyes about old maids living together and references to "odd couples."

I vividly remember my father chastising me for treating the black elevator at his office building as an inferior. "Aye, laddie, they'll be as much the Lord's children as are you and I. Now, I'll be wanting you to go back and express your regrets, like a man, and offer him your hand." The elevator operator smiled broadly, shook my hand, and said, "You're Dr. Smith's son, aren't you?"

I heard about "queers" and "fairies" in school and on the streets. It remained largely in the back of my mind except for one event when I was approached in a men's room when I was about 13 in 1939. Distressed and frightened, I talked to my mother about the event. My father was dead at the time. My mother told me not to worry, went to the store where the man worked, and excoriated him. He always lowered his head after that.

The whole issue remained dormant, except for those times during puberty when sexual identification is a paramount issue as a boy has fleeting fears that he may be a "queer." That disappeared when I discovered girls.

During my military service I was generally unaware of the issue. As I look back on those years, I think in our close knit unit there was a homosexual, but nothing ever surfaced. A good bit of the time, I was fearful, being in recurring perilous situations. When people are afraid for their lives, sexual identification is not an issue. Of the five men in the unit, all are dead save for me. I understand one died of AIDS. One was killed in Selma while we were there during the civil rights marches. The other two died of alcoholism and a heart attack.

Of course, throughout the years I was approached three or four times by homosexuals, events I found unpleasant largely because I did not how to reject the approaches gracefully. I hate being awkward.

During the years I taught clinical hypnoanalysis to psychotherapists, many gays and lesbians came to the classes, and I felt at ease with them. Also, during those years I had many gay and lesbian clients which compelled me to think of them as human beings, not as peculiarities. Of course, the two years I spent as an intern at UCLA's Neuro-psychiatric Institute led me to rethink a lot of my conventional attitudes. The big change was that I began to think of them as human beings, not as defective specimens.

Indeed, for many years my office mate was a politically ardent lesbian who asked me to officiate at her wedding to another lesbian. I liked and admired her, and after a few hours thought, I agreed to do it, much to the displeasure of many people. This was about 1975. I took the marriage ceremony of the Book of Common Order of the Church of Scotland and changed the pronouns.

I continued to have many gay and lesbian clients, and sometimes I felt a little nonplussed and awkward when specific details of sexual encounters were discussed. For the most part clients tend to withhold specific information that would be useful to know, but now and then clients gave me more information than I wanted to know. However, the psychotherapist's tendency to set aside personal judgments helped.

The biggest challenge occurred when a man called me several times on the telephone, never giving me his name, asking me about my attitude toward gays and changing gender. I agreed to meet him, and that meeting led me to do a lot of soul-searching. The man I met was tormented and terrified. He felt he could not remain a male but was frightened of going through the operations needed to change his gender. I knew I had to respond. I remembered my father's admonition that mercy, not rectitude, was a cardinal virtue.

The question in my mind: was the whole issue an offence to my religious convictions or a simple matter of correcting a mistake, as in repairing a harelip or a clubfoot. I concluded that deformities of the spirit were just as likely to happen as deformities of the flesh. I remembered the many times I heard gays and lesbians tell me that they felt the way they did from early childhood. After working through the issue with him and preparing him for the change, he disappeared. So I do not know the outcome.

During the civil rights crises of the 1960's and 70's I was heavily involved, marching, demonstrating, preaching, and meetings all of which were accompanied with cross-burnings on my front lawn, telephonic threats late at night, and brief periods in jail. One time I expressed to a college student my personal distaste for some things about modern black culture. She expressed surprise and asked me how I could be for civil rights for blacks and not like some of their music. My reply was simple. A person has rights whether or not I like them or their culture. As a matter of fact, I don't like most of modern popular culture, but that has nothing to do with human rights.

Ultimately, it comes down to an issue about oddity. How much oddity can a society tolerate? One thing for sure is that a society cannot tolerate anti-social and sociopathic oddity, as in theft and murder. While many of us may find gay and lesbian marriages, cross-dressing, and sex change operations odd, they are clearly not anti-social. It's time for a lot of people to grow up and stop dealing with their own personal fears and distastes by condemning other people. For me, it has finally come down to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He died and rose for everyone which means that every human being is worth the sacrifice of Christ. We all bear God's image and the mark of Christ. As Saint Paul said, "It is God who justifies, who is to condemn?"