In the inner world, time has a way of standing still long enough so you can come to your senses.\u00a0 Then you can have eyes that see and ears that hear. My Aunt Jewel taught me this more by example than with words. She had no use for words and she wasn\u2019t really my aunt. Mama, a divorc\u00e9e from Mississippi, had married into Auntie\u2019s Choctaw Indian family one-day shy of my first birthday. At four feet eleven with a heart as big as Texas, I could always count on her for a kind word and a tender voice.\u00a0 Learning some of the old ways with her taught me that cause and effect can\u2019t always be foretold much less recognized and controlled.<\/p>\n
My earliest memory of Auntie is the first time she took me to her one room church near the Little Cypress Bayou that flows through the Blue Elbow Swamp, eventually entering the Sabine River near I-10 in Orange, Texas.\u00a0 The church, <\/em>a tiny clapboard painted white with a piney wood floor and a few benches, was where the beleaguered believers felt they belonged.<\/p>\n \u201cWho needs a HEALING\u201d screamed Preacher, a red-faced man in black pants and a cheap white, sweat-soaked shirt that encased his gut, revealing a life time of buttery biscuits and sausage gravy.<\/p>\n \u201cNancy Ann, I think ya got a fever\u201d Auntie said aloud as her brown hand felt my white face.<\/p>\n \u201cNo mam \u2013 I ain\u2019t got no fever!<\/p>\n \u201cYes, you do\u201d she whispered as she firmly took me by the arm and guided me to the homemade dais.\u00a0 Down on my knees I went with the weight of Auntie\u2019s hand on my right shoulder.<\/p>\n When Preacher caught his breath long enough to notice he had a child to work on, he began crying and wailed, \u201cunless you change and become like this little child, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.\u201d\u00a0 He held up a small bottle of Jerusalem Holy Oil, so all could behold the glorious healing about to occur.\u00a0 As I looked up at Preacher, heartburn from that morning\u2019s breakfast caused me mistakenly to believe it needed to be healed.<\/p>\n \u201cChild, do you want to be healed,\u201d he asked while kneeling to better look me in the eye.<\/p>\n \u201cI think so.\u201d<\/p>\n The fears that bumped around in my already wizened seven-year-old psyche were very real.\u00a0 \u00a0I didn\u2019t have the faith in the old ways like Auntie did.\u00a0 My pagan mother had taught me to believe in the evil eye and being cursed and such, but not in the hell that Preacher and Auntie did.\u00a0 To Mama, heaven was a piece of land, a good scotch with a good screw; something that made this life a little easier to bare.\u00a0 Hell was in between your ears, right here, right now.<\/p>\n \u201cChild are you ready to confess your sins,\u201d Preacher asked.<\/p>\n \u201cI think so.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou think so,\u201d he said with a faint smile.<\/p>\n \u201cYes Sir.\u00a0 I think so.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo you repent of all your sins, so you can be healed?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cY e s . . . sir\u201d slowly slipped from my lips and with that, I was suddenly looking up at the ceiling as Preacher held the back of my head, while making the sign of the cross on my third eye with his oily finger.\u00a0 Auntie, already filled with the Holy Ghost, was speaking in tongues. My skinny little body began to swoon as it filled with the divine energy.\u00a0\u00a0 The room began to swirl, and I fell back on Aunt Jewel who slowly lowered me to the floor.<\/p>\n \u201cPraise God\u201d she wailed.<\/p>\n \u201cPraise God\u201d cried the congregants who were no longer quietly singing and humming along with the makeshift band.\u00a0 Now they were making a loud and glorious music unto the Lord singing I\u2019ll Fly Away<\/em> as loud as possible:<\/p>\n When the shadows of this life have gone As I lay there on the floor unable to get up and surrounded by all the wonderful beleaguered believers, my heart filled with joy and my nose filled with the scent of the myrrh and sweet-smelling cinnamon used to make the Jerusalem Holy Oil Preacher had used to heal me. \u00a0The singing was muffled as if far away,<\/p>\n I’ll fly away, oh glory After what felt like an eternity, I was helped to my feet.\u00a0 Everyone was beaming at me.\u00a0 Auntie, grinning ear to ear, was hugging me up close and whispering now we got to git ya baptized baby girl.\u00a0 Now we got to git ya baptized.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cYes Lord\u2026 I know Lord\u2026 Thank you Lord\u2026\u201d Preacher prayed while still on his knees. \u00a0His voice just loud enough so everyone could hear he was still conversing with Jesus.<\/p>\n There was a static electricity in the room.\u00a0 Every time someone came to hug me, there was a shock.\u00a0 My hair was sticking out on end the way it does when you pull a sweater over your head in the winter.\u00a0 But my stomach wasn\u2019t burning anymore, and Auntie was so pleased with me she was promising a Dairy Queen double dip.<\/p>\n While she was saying her goodbyes, I went outside to stand in the October chill.\u00a0 It was a clear day with a slight breeze.\u00a0 Looking up at the sun, I wondered if my heart got healed.\u00a0 I wondered if a healing was the same as a protection. Mostly, I wondered what if Mama was right?\u00a0 What if hell really is between your ears, right here, right now?\u00a0 What then?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the inner world, time has a way of standing still long enough so you can come to your senses.\u00a0 Then you can have eyes that see and ears that hear. My Aunt Jewel taught me this more by example than with words. She had no use for words and she wasn\u2019t really my aunt. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":116,"featured_media":3944,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,1],"tags":[201],"class_list":["post-3943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-uncategorized","tag-2019april"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI’ll fly away
\nLike a bird from these prison walls I’ll fly
\nI’ll fly away.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nI’ll fly away in the morning
\nWhen I die, Hallelujah by and by
\nI’ll fly away.<\/em><\/p>\n