November 26 - the day before Thanksgiving 2014

What am I most thankful for this year?  My daughter moved to San Francisco this year and I found out she's homesick for our family Thanksgiving.  I am most thankful for that... that Bridgett is homesick. Knowing that she is a little homesick for Thanksgiving lets me know I might have done something right.

My own family never was too big on Thanksgiving that I can remember.  Fact is, I can't remember until after my grandma died when I was in the sixth grade.  After that we started going to my Uncle Bill's house and I got to know some of my cousins on dad's side and looked forward to seeing them once a year.  We all grew up and it became hit or miss on meeting and it got to the point where I never spent Thanksgiving the same place two years in a row.  That all changed 22 years ago.

I had moved to Cincinnati, gotten married (to a girl from Nashville that I met after I moved to Cincinnati) and started a family.  Lynn and I lived in an old row house in Queensgate.   It was a three story divided into three apartments in a downtown neighborhood in transition that never quite transitioned.  One of Lynn's friends from work was looking for a new place to live and we talked her into moving into the upstairs apartment.  Her name was Juanita.

I am also thankful for Juanita, as is everyone who visits our house for Thanksgiving.

Juanita liked to cook and she was good. She'd remark from time to time that she never saw white people enjoy soul food so much.  We had to explain to her that Cincinnati Soul Food was nothing more than home cookin' down south.  (except for the oxtail soup, never had that growing up... never want to have it again as a grownup. - I thought those were pinwheel pasta that didn't get cooked all the way - until Juanita's boyfriend helped me make the connection)

Bridgett was born the end of October in 1992.  Our parents alternated coming up to help out at first and my parents were going to be there on Thanksgiving.   I was going to buy a prepared meal but Juanita heard and would have nothing to do with that.  So on Thanksgiving Day 1992, Juanita Harris would run up and down the stairs at our old row house checking on me and teaching me how to make Turkey and Dressing.  (She had to teach me how to make cornbread before she taught me how to make dressing).

The grandparents would alternate years coming up for Thanksgiving until the last year , then we had them both up to Cincinnati at the same time.  (1995)

After we moved back to Nashville and got settled we started cooking Thanksgiving and inviting the extended family over.  These are some of the best times we have.  Through it all, Bridgett has always been my number one helper.

Some years she'd write the menu, other years she'd make the guest list, greet "the customers" and check them off the list.  As she got older she'd help me cook.  She always taste tested to make sure everything was done to perfection.

The last couple of years she became the bartender and made sure the cook had the strongest Bloody Mary while making Mimosa's for her mom and the other ladies.

I can count on one hand the number of times I haven't cooked Thanksgiving Dinner in the last 22 years.  Bridgett is the reason I started cooking Thanksgiving Dinner and this will be the first year we will not be together for it.

I was really sad when I realized we wouldn't see Bridgett for Thanksgiving, but then didn't think about it much as the grind of life took over.  As fall approached, I started to realize it was going to be harder than I thought - but that's just me - when I'm not grumpy, I'm emotional.  For me,
Thanksgiving wouldn't be what it is today for me if not for Bridgett  (and Juanita, of course).

So, when Bridgett let on she was a little homesick - I was happy. Not because I'm mean and don't want her to be happy, but because it makes me think I did something right.  I know all those Thanksgiving's meant something to her and she will have those memories all the rest of her life. Maybe in a few years I'll be at her house teaching her how to make cornbread in a skillet and how to give a turkey a deep tissue massage - unless she finds her own Juanita.

Happy Thanksgiving to all - and especially to the girl who owns my heart... I'll miss you at the table this year.  We all will.

Danny Butler
November 26, 2014

Everything Means Something or Nothing Means Anything

In the dream I'm talking to my father - a common dream occurrence recently - and I'm asking him questions about the street preacher Holy Hubert Lindsey who told my father he was going to hell for two drug-dealing years before my father's conversion. I want to write about my conflictions about the wild evangelicalistic street preacher and I was trying to find out what caliber of gun Hubert was shot with when my father saw him shot at point blank range only to be healed on the way to the hospital, bail out and pray with his attacker, returning to the streets to continue preaching.

And then Hubert was there, in my dream.

"Wait," I said. "Are you the real Holy Hubert?"

"No," he said, "I'm the Holy Hubert in your dream." Daniel Silliman, 2.07.2004,

http://danielsilliman.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_danielsilliman_archive.html. 

________________________________________
August 19, 2006 - the oddesy begins...Danny's account of the Jesus Movement.

Strange. In the past year or so, I have "Googled" Holy Hubert's name a dozen times and never found anything. Last night I found Website upon Website about Hubert Lindsey. Based on whose eyes the testimony is coming from, he is either a cantankerous crackpot or a modern day prophet. It seems to be the same man, though. The only difference is the heart of the witness.

Either everything means something or nothing means anything. There is a circuit in my thinking that cannot completely connect in this story. Though I heard him preach and testify to the great things God has done in his life, and remember most of them even though it's been 25 years since I last heard him, I never connected him with the Jesus movement.

The first time I heard him preach was on a Tuesday night, probably around 1980 or 1981. It was a dark night for me and I longed for the warmth at the Lord's Chapel. I did not know it but Brother Moore was not preaching that night, Holy Hubert was. The more he talked, the more I hated him. "Stop in the name of Jesus or God said he would strike you where you stand" he recounted from one of his violent crusades. Apparently the man did not stop and God struck him dead. There was story upon story like this and it all seemed so loveless and dreadful. I wanted no part of this. I drove home in pain and emptiness. Why would they let this man preach in a church like ours?

In the summer of 1974, Owen came to our house looking for my older brother, Dennis. He was not home. He was excited and he wanted to talk to someone. He talked to me instead. From that day forward, Owen and I had a different relationship. It was the summer before 10th grade and I guess I was about 15. He would have been about 20. 

He was my older brother's friend and probably the coolest guy I knew growing up. Curtis and I would sit behind him in church and try to stand with our hands shoved in our back pockets and legs spread wide apart just like he did. He had some of the funniest lines, too. "Hey, your nose is bleeding... no its snot." or "Man, its raining like Hail outside." But that's when he was in High School. There was something different about him when he talked to me on the front porch. 

Owen's younger brother was a year older than I was and he was cool, too, but only as cool as a guy about your same age can be. Not that older, high school cool. Tim used to get me in trouble in church by making me laugh when everyone else was quiet. He and I were friends, but we were not really alike and we didn't have a lot in common. That changed the first night I heard Holy Hubert preach.

Owen

Back on the porch, Owen showed me a pamphlet with a finger pointing to the sky. I think the pamphlet was called "One Way to Christ." He read the four spiritual laws to me and explained them. He encouraged me to pray the sinner's prayer on my front porch and I did. I felt better than I had in a long time. He gave me a bunch of tracts and would take me to Jesus rallies. I got to meet pioneers like Randy Mathews and Dogwood. I prayed and read my Bible. The youngest kid at the rallies, I knew I fit in with my long hair and top hat. (cue to laughter). 

That summer, Owen introduced me to the West Coast Phenomenon called the Jesus Movement, except they didn't call it that.

Recently, Tom got me "Googling" for websites about the Jesus Movement. Call me slow, but 30 years later I finally made the connection between Owen and the Jesus Movement. I was touched and inspired. Inspired enough to drop an email to David Di Sabatino about my front porch experience. (Di Sabantino is the man who put out the movie about Lonnie Frisbee from the Jesus Movement).

Owen went back to school, or wherever he was going and I entered the 10th grade. I fell hard that year and my life seemed to turn black. Fast forward to the second semester of my freshman year in college. Drugged out and depressed, I despised Christians and Christianity. The associate pastor of Maranantha Ministries painted a target on me. By the end of that semester, I had made it very clear how much I loathed Brother Mark's religion and would never submit to their God or become one of them.

I could not wait to find Brother Mark when I went back to school that fall. Things changed over the summer. Last year, the Maranantha folks were praying for me, witnessing to me and trying to cast out the demons. I was cursing them, their religion, their bookstore and God. This year I was one of them, attending the rallies and ultimately Baptized in one of the most surreal services you could imagine. Maranantha Ministries came from the West Coast Jesus Movement. 

I started the steps toward becoming a Baptist Preacher, made a pretty big mistake and was more or less ostracized from the Baptist Ministry. Tom had come to me some months before taking about some intense problems in his life, which opened the door for me to come to him now. He took me to the Lord's Chapel and I was introduced again to a God of love and acceptance, not unlike the experience from the summer with Owen or the year with Maranantha. 

From what I understand, the Chapel in those days was a "Calvary" based Church. Calvary is the church started by Pastor Chuck Smith and the history of the Jesus Movement is intertwined with the history of Calvary Churches. You cannot have one without the other. Brother Moore, called to preach at the Lord's Chapel in its infancy is no stranger to his own Jesus Movement. 

The second time I heard Holy Hubert preach at the Lord's Chapel I loved him. He told the same stories and preached just like before but this time I felt the love he had for God and man flow out of him. Tom and I went down to meet him after the service and could feel the electricity coming out of his hands. Before he pronounced a blessing on us, Tom reminded me of the question he asked us: "Do you use tobacco or alcohol?" After hearing all the things that happened in his ministry, I am sure we were too scared to lie, lest we be struck dead or impotent, and told him we didn't drink and were giving up the smokes tomorrow. In his blessing he told us were going to do great things together. I loved that man and never forgot him.

The reason I feel compelled to rehash this history is because I just put all these things together this weekend when Tom told me to look up the Jesus Movement and then pointed me to a picture of Holy Hubert. The point of connection that I cannot quite connect goes back to the first night I heard Holy Hubert preach. The reason the night was so black was because it was the night my mom told me Owen died a violent and tragic death that weekend.

Why would I happen to hear a man like this, a man with his own violent past, preach this night. The man who helped bring the Jesus Movement to the world was preaching on the night I was mourning the death of the man who brought the Jesus Movement to me.

Does this mean anything? Either everything means something or nothing means anything. 

I don't know. What I do know is while I was pondering this a young man came to my door, out of gas and lost. All I could do was chastise him for pulling into my neighbors yard and tell him it was too far to walk to his destination. The nerve of this guy; doesn't he know you don't run out of gas in Belle Meade and you certainly don't come up to someone's door asking for directions? Get a cell phone for crying out loud. I needed to get back to pondering the impact of the Jesus Movement in my life....

Maybe it doesn't mean anything. Maybe there is no connection, but I know one guy who got some gas and two guys who got some direction because of it. Hopefully they will both make their destinations.
________________________________________

Holy Hubert

"Do you want a Revolution? I said do you want a revolution? I can't hear you radicals do you want a revolution?", by this time he would have all the hippies and socialist listening and would go on to say, "...You don't need a revolution on the outside, NO!!! You need one on the inside, and the greatest revolution you will ever have is when Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God comes into your hearts."

Then Dr. Billy Graham once asked Brother Lindsey, "Dr. Lindsey, what is the greatest demonstration that you have ever broken up?"
Dr. Lindsey replied, " 35,000"
Billy Graham said "One Man!?"
Hubert replied, "Jesus was with me Dr. Graham!" 



everything means something or nothing means anything
Danny Butler
Nashville Tennessee
©August 19, 2006