My Beginning

Image from Wikipedia

        Do you remember the 1979 film "The Jerk" starring Steve Martin as Navin Johnson? The movie starts with Navin, a homeless man in an alleyway, telling the audience:

"Huh? I am not a bum, I'm a jerk. I once had wealth, power,
and the love of a beautiful woman. Now I only have two things. My
friends and... uh... my thermos. Huh? My story? O.k. It was never
for easy for me. I was born a poor black child. I remember the
days sitting on the porch with my family singing and dancing,
down in Mississippi."
From <http://www.awesomefilm.com/script/jerksc.html>

         I can't say that my beginning was that colorful (sorry for the pun) and I wasn't adopted (at least not to the best of my knowledge). The only thing I seem to have in common with Navin Johnson is that I have been a jerk. But that is a story for another time.

        I am the firstborn of a Christian family, brought into this world on a Tuesday in May of 1967. I don't recall either of my parents ever talking about my birth being long or painful. The only family story I remember originates from shortly before my birth and how my aunt and uncle, who were also expecting, had liked the name that my parents had picked out for me. Imagine a girl named Kenneth! My parents named me after themselves - Kenneth is my father's middle name and is Gaelic for "handsome". My middle name, Lynn, is part of my mother's middle name Carolyn. Lynn is Anglo-Saxon for "cascade". So I guess I'm just a handsome cascade. But I digress…

         For some of you, 1967 would have been the "Summer of Love". For others, you were in Asian jungles fighting unappreciated wars. That particular May, one of my music heroes-to-be, Jimi Hendrix had released his debut album "Are You Experienced" with his band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience. A few weeks later, the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's and events on the world stage exploded with the start of the Six-Day War. Of course, what did I know, I was just a baby. Looking back, though, it was a time of change, violence, rage against the establishment, hippies, music, war, cold-war, race-riots - hmmm - has anything changed in 50 years?

        My parents were Methodists and so as an infant, I was baptized a Methodist. This was 1967, so the United Methodist Church hadn't been formed yet. (For those of you who don't know, the "united" in United Methodist Church refers to the Evangelical United Brethren Church that combined with the Methodist Church in 1968 to form the United Methodist Church. Thus endeth the history lesson.)

        I can remember, as a small child, anytime the church doors were open, someone from the Sommerville family was there. And of course, being a child, I had to go where my parents went. My mother sang in the choir and was involved in women's ministry. My father ushered and helped out by servicing the air conditioners or fixing the plumbing. As soon as I was old enough, I started singing in the children's choir.

        I received my first church bible, an RSV "Young Readers Bible", in third grade (that would be 1975 if anyone's keeping track). For some reason, it's a Methodist tradition to give third graders a bible. I guess they think they're old enough to read the bible. When I finished confirmation in sixth grade, I received another bible - "Good News-Today's English Version". During these years, I had gone regularly to Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, church camp, sang in choirs, was at church on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings and don't recall ever complaining. I liked going to church. It's the only place where I got to see my "church friends". I learned things in Sunday School like "Jesus Loves Me" and "This Little Light of Mine". I learned things in the choir about John and Charles Wesley - the founders of Methodism. I learned all the bible stories - Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood, Moses and the Ten Commandments, Samson, David and Goliath, Jesus, Christmas, Easter - and on, and on, and on.

        When I entered ninth grade, I received yet another bible - "The Way, A Living Bible". I had already started a bible collection, and yet, I don't think I ever really read the bible unless it was to find a verse for Sunday School. I do remember one time, our church held a bible reading competition and somehow I won. I didn't think that I had read all that much (only Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, most of the Psalms, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts and probably Revelation, but who's counting) and yet I had read more than anyone else, even the adults.

        My high school years found me very active in our youth choir and youth group. We sang. We went to youth camp. We made trips around the country - to Colorado, Wisconsin, New Orleans, South Dakota - everywhere. We adopted a poor family from the south side of San Antonio. We did all the things a youth group is supposed to do, right? But somehow, I graduated high school missing out on the most important thing - knowing Jesus. Of course, I was just a high school kid. I didn't know that was an important thing to know. All I knew was the church, and somehow I made the two equivalent.

        I graduated high school in the spring of 1985 and a few months later, left home for college at The University of Texas at Austin. There began, what I now call, my desert wandering. (To be continued...)

~~Ken