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serving as pilgrim Life History Rev. Eric Posa | |||||
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Track 3: Song: "Imagine" Artist: John Lennon The teen years are a time of rebellion for many people, and certainly that was true for me. But my rebellion was not behavioral, it was ideological. Since they did not have me until their mid/late 30s, there was a generation gap between me and my parents. They were teens in the early '50s; me, in the mid/late '80s. The 1960s somehow got skipped in my family. That didn't remain the case, though. It started when I began listening to '60s rock, soul, and folk music. Of course, it's impossible to encounter '60s pop music without running head first into the social movements with which the music and musicians were closely involved. The Civil Rights struggles, opposition to the Vietnam War, and the counterculture movement all resonated with me, and I found myself idealizing this time when large numbers of people rose up to speak truth to power as they saw it. This helped to awaken my sense of compassion for those denied privileges. All of these influences inspired me to affirm attitudes my parents, as conservative, white Southerners, explicitly rejected. My religious rebellion also developed, though it was more against my community than against my family. Buying into my mother's disparaging comments about two-faced churchgoers gradually evolved into complete rejection of organized religion, and the theological ideas I heard coming from the religious communities of my hometown. By the time I moved from Kennedale to Denton (about 40 miles north of Fort Worth and Dallas), to begin my undergraduate studies at the University of North Texas, I was a committed atheist who wanted no part in any religious community. backward to "The Wings of a Dove" forward to "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" | |||||
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