December 26, 2006

          My son, I am not a “Christian” in the contemporary definition of the word.  I have, however, been accused of being more of a Christian than others professing to be Christians. 

          This country was founded by Christians…who took it away from what is called, to be politically correct, Native Americans.  For a long while our ancestral Christians called them barbaric, heathens, ignorant and a variety of other names indicating they were a little lower on the food chain than the then contemporary Christians.  They were called “Indians.”

          You must be part barbaric because your great grandmother, my grandmother, was Creek. By blood, that makes you a little less barbaric than me.  This is factious; I do hope you see a little humor in this paragraph.  

          The contemporary “Christian” believes in a virgin birth and only one “God” that claimed, by the way, when speaking to Moses and laying down the law, that “Thou shall have no other Gods before Me!”  Christians have many explanations that justify contradicting that statement into meaning what they want it to mean.  Personally, I never met Moses; I simply take the “law” at face value as it was written, according to Moses, by God’s own finger. 

          It would give justification to the “heathen Indians” belief in their ‘Sun God,’ ‘Moon God,’ ‘Earth God’ and a variety of other Gods…just as long as they are held in a lower esteem than Moses’ God.  

          Moslems have their “Allah” that is their ‘true’ God.   They are uncircumcised heathens just as the Indians but Christians are doomed because Christians, according to the Moslems, are circumcised unbelievers in the truth.  Such unnecessary bickering among the various religions.  Such intolerance for one another’s differences.  Coke and Pepsi.  They both accomplish the same goal.  Why argue over it?

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          I don’t believe the Indians ever condemned our good ancestral Christians for being “different.”  They had a quality called tolerance.  That tolerance and unselfishness played a part in their demise as stewards over this land that was once theirs.  But we, as Christians, sure condemned them, as Christians, like Moslems, have no tolerance for a belief that is different. 

          I was raised a Catholic.  Only Catholics have a chance to make it to Heaven.  If you don’t believe that, just ask my mother. 

          My father was raised as a protestant.  When he died, though he attended Catholic services regularly, he was not allowed to have his funeral service in a Catholic Church. 

          My next older brother, Perry, was raised a Catholic but married a Baptist who, even worse, had been divorced.  He died at age 44.

          I married a Baptist in 1955.  That marriage lasted five years.  She was only 16.  I was excommunicated.

          I lost my next brother just a few months ago.  He remained a Catholic with no tolerance for any other belief…especially mine…to the bitter end and much of his offspring retain his bitterness. 

          I still have my oldest brother.  Nearing the end of his life, and a Catholic, but with a difference:  His family holds love above intolerance.  They do not condemn.

          You have two half-sisters.  Both with different beliefs.  Neither follow the contemporary Christian belief.  Both are different from one another and both are different from me.  The three of us do not condemn one another because we are different in our convictions.  Why should we?  Of what benefit is it?  Shall I condemn the Moslems for praying to the East?  The Christians for believing in a virgin birth?  The Indians for believing in Kachinas? 

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          “Love one another, as I have loved you.”  Jesus,  The Christ.  I accept that title.  The Enlightened One.  The Teacher of The Way.  I think Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, later known as Sakyamuni (Sage of the Sakyas), also an “Enlightened One,” taught the same thing 500 years earlier.  Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, K'ung Fu-Tzu (Confucius) Plato and the Stoics taught the same thing.

          All teachers of the Way and there are others, all heathens because they don’t believe in the Virgin Birth!  That includes the Jews who are still patiently waiting for the “first coming.”  It also includes me. 

          Life is extremely complicated, but only because we make it so for ourselves.  Greed, lust, desire, Santa Claus and Rudolf the red nosed reindeer.  Christians seem to hold these things even higher than the Virgin Birth.  The ‘Virgin Birth’ foundation, Jesus, does not sell toys for Christmas. 

          I love you, son of mine.  In a few days I will be 70 years old.  Quite old, by today’s standards, to be raising a child.  By the time you are able to be taught things like canoeing I will be too old to get in a canoe.  By the time you are old enough to be taught how to drive a vehicle I will be too old to take you for your driver’s license.  By the time you have the strength to master a chain saw I will be too old to lift one and show you the way.  By the time you are old enough to build a home I will be too old to lift a hammer.

          But I am not too old to develop and expand your mind.  I am not too old to teach you how to read.  I am not too old to teach you how to think.  I am not too old to teach you morals.  I am not too old to teach you tolerance and patience.  Reason and understanding.  How to learn.  Values. 

          All these things take great amounts of time.  Time Foster Parents do not have.  Especially with the meager payments they receive from DHS to ‘baby sit’ you and watch you grow up physically.  “Go to your room and watch TV.”  What that really means is “Go away, you bother me.  I’m not your dad and I’m not paid enough to give you what you need.” 

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          I was a licensed Foster Parent for ten years.  When I applied, in 1975, I had an unusual thought:  They need foster parents, what is this going to cost me?  Can I afford it?  Do I have enough to give a child what a child needs?  I have the time; I’m retired.  I have the patience and I have the education…and agree to take extra courses at Idaho State University to expand my knowledge of child care and training.  My only problem, I thought, might be that I could not afford what it would take to feed and clothe a child.  I decided I could afford it …and then learned that H.E.W. actually pays people for foster care.   That people do it for money!!  Was I ever naive! (In Idaho D.H.S. was called Department of Health, Education and Welfare, or “H.E.W.”)

          What meager funds DHS did pay me fell far short of what the children needed.  DHS’ definition of the word “need” is significantly inadequate when compared to my definition of the word “need.”

          DHS:  A child needs $5. for their birthday present.  A child needs $10 for a Christmas present.  A child does not need to go to an opera.  A child does not need a musical instrument to play in the school orchestra.  A child does not need a bicycle.  A child does not need a sled.  A child does not need good/new coat for winter.  A child does not need to go on water-skiing trips.  A child does not need to have a pair of snow skis.  A child does not need a fishing rod and tackle.  A child does not need to be taught how to swim.  A child does not need …Bull shit!  A child needs all these things and more.  But DHS does not agree. 

          One thing I did not buy for those in my care 20 plus years ago was a computer.  They didn’t have computers back then.  I think one would be necessary now but DHS will not dole the funds to buy one.  Just one more expense I would have had I continued my Child Care License beyond ten years and still had it to date.  You will need one as soon as you know the alphabet.  Will you get it?  Highly unlikely, unless it comes from me and DHS’ Mikah McCray wants to put me in prison where I won’t be able to even afford to buy toothpaste!

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          When you cry you are put in your cage.  You will quit crying when you get tired.  You will have lots of plastic toys.  When you get too big for your cage you will be sent to your room where you won’t bother anyone.  You will probably have your own TV and a few video games to keep you occupied…to baby sit you.  No one is paid enough to take the place of a father who loves his son as I love you. 

          “Age discrimination.”  A factor that enters the picture.  Federal law says I cannot be discriminated against because of my age.  But I was young enough to create you; I am young enough to raise you to, I think, the age of reason.  My time is short and our lives together needs to be a ‘crash course’ in life for me to teach as much and for you to learn as much as possible in what little time there is left for the both of us to be together in this life.  The learning can, and would, be as enjoyable as the teaching. 

          I once wrote “A child’s mind is like a sponge.  Eagerly waiting to soak in whatever is available for it.”  [Plato teaches one is born with knowledge {parallels Buddhist ‘reincarnation’} and it needs only be ‘developed’] Pick my brain, son.  Pick it to pieces.  That is what it is for.  If DHS does not send me to prison and deprive you of it by farming you out to strangers.  Strangers who are told by DHS, “Don’t get attached.”

          Read your history books about Germany in WW2.  Hitler had the best DHS system in the world.  Healthy females were bred; the babies were given to nurseries ‘manned’ by milk producers, and when old enough sent off to military camp. The mothers worked in the war factories and the fathers went off to war as soldiers.  Perhaps you see the similarity and how our DHS is developing in to the equivalent of WW2’s Germany? 

          “We don’t need proof a child has been abused, we only need a suspicion.”  Even though three physicians will not comply with DHS’ Mikah McCray’s request that they state “inflicted” injury Mikah McCray has her suspicion and that is enough to take a child from his father.  DHS has the same power of Hitler’s WW2 SS in Germany when, if one was even ‘suspected’ of being a Jew they were put in a concentration camp. What is the difference? 

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          Your freedom to be with your father is denied the same way. Enforced by Storm Troopers with automatic weapons of greater caliber than the 9mm Lugers of Germany…what is the difference? 

          The third day following your birth DHS came to our home with two of their armed guards with .40 caliber automatic weapons and interrogated your mother and I.  She was warned not to leave you with me; she was threatened that if anything happened to you she would be held equally responsible.  Not that anything was going to happen to you.

           Accidents happen and one happened.  Five months had lapsed before one did, five months of excellent care of you…that goes for naught.  A fracture is a fracture; looking at one on an x-ray there is no way to tell how it happened unless you would be able to speak and confirm the truth.

          Following are copies of letters and legal documents filed to date: