GOD AND US

Religion in the USA is the focus of this PBS series on American Experience's Frontline

Although I don't consider myself as a religious person, I was raised in a very religious family and environment. Very fundamentalist, very conservative and not encouraged to think for myself/ourselves...beyond what we were told is the truth. I don't fit in my family's plan for me. I am therefore a misfit, an outcast, a "disappointment" to what was expected of me and judgment from the members has always been present.

I approve of me. Although at times, I would prefer to feel like I fit in my family, it is necessary that it is enough that I am okay with who and what I am. Being a "member" has been secondary to living a life that is not pretentious and in my truth.

But, I am interested in learning why I am what I am and where I "came from". So this American Experience's Frontline series sounds interesting to me. I plan to watch it. It is always online if you miss it when it airs on TV.

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Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

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October 11 – God in America: Episodes 1 & 2

October 12 – God in America: Episodes 3 & 4

October 13 – God in America: Episodes 5 & 6

Excerpts from the PBS website about God in America

...For the first time on television, God in America, a presentation of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE and FRONTLINE, will explore the historical role of religion in the public life of the United States. The six-hour series, which interweaves documentary footage, historical dramatization and interviews with religious historians, will air over three consecutive nights on PBS beginning Oct. 11, 2010....

..."The American story cannot be fully understood without understanding the country's religious history," says series executive producer Michael Sullivan. "By examining that history, God in America will offer viewers a fresh, revealing and challenging portrait of the country."...

..."Americans are awash in a sea of faith, but their knowledge about religious faiths and religious history often runs as shallow as their commitment to religion runs deep," notes Stephen Prothero, chief editorial consultant for God in America, professor of religion at Boston University, and author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know -- And Doesn't. "A series like God in America can help correct that imbalance and provide the basis for a common understanding of the role religion has played in American public life."...

And this series will be airing again....

We Shall Remain

~ this is a "must see" about the people who lived here before the immigrants came and took their land and denied them to live their lives in the freedom they had before the government of the USA was formed

October 18 – We Shall Remain: After the Mayflower

October 25 – We Shall Remain: Tecumseh's Vision

November 1 – We Shall Remain: Trail of Tears

HONORING MY DAD'S SISTER - EVALYN HAMMEL WOHLFORD

Tennis

Mutua Madrileña Madrid Open 2009
Philipp Kohlschreiber withdrew May 14, Thursday, 2009. Therefore, Rafa had a walk-over into the quarter finals, where he will face fellow countryman Fernando Verdasco.

The match will be at 2 p.m. USA EDT/DST
Friday, May 15, 2009

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TRIBUTE to EVALYN JANE HAMMEL WOHLFORD

My dad's sister, the only surviving sibling of five children, and the only girl, has retired from her beloved music - her beautiful piano playing - due to physical limitations. A day she never wanted to come. Upon her retirement after 67 years of sharing her gift of music in the church I grew up in - in Huntington, Indiana - the church is honoring her soon.

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I Surrender All - hymn
Uploaded by WorshipVideo

This is a note I mailed to her recently...

May 10, 2009

Dear Evalyn,

Something dear to me is the wonderful heritage that I carry with me from the days of sitting in the old sanctuary of the East State Street Church of God (the one with the sanctuary that included the sections that could be closed off for Sunday school classes and the nursery in the balcony). The most wonderful memories that are with me today, come from the music, the beautiful “old” hymns that you played and we sang. Thank you, Evalyn, for the gift of music you developed, cherish, nourished my heart with and shared with us all. I owe you a debt that I can never repay ~ I can just be grateful and pass on the blessing.

Also, very meaningful to me were those Sunday nights that the congregation spent the whole evening just singing hymns. I remember Deeny, Stanton and Melba’s daughter, and Karen, Vic and Frieda’s daughter, singing the descants to the congregational singing of He’s the Lily of the Valley. And Vic and Stanton singing the lines to Peace Like a River. I just loved the singing! I could sit as a child, let my mind wander during the sermons, but the music is what always brought me back into the service. A verse of Just As I Am, Softly and Tenderly, I Surrender All or It is Well With My Soul touched my soul where just words never could reach. The music of these hymns still affect me in a very special way.

Please accept my appreciation and gratitude for helping bring music into my life.

With love

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Another hymn I grew up with....Softly and Tenderly
Used in the movie A Trip to Bountiful - (which I recommend)
Uploaded by RRRGroup2

And I sent the following to her inside a card via the church, which is honoring her on May 31, 2009:

The Gift of Music

Dedicated to Evalyn (Hammel) Wohlford

by Sandra Hammel


Music reaches places in us that words just can’t.

Ah, yes, words can lift, inspire, summon us;

But what can wash over us like music?

Enter our inner most sanctuary and become one with our being?

Permeate our mind, our heart, our spirit

and be present with us in our hour of joy,

need

or sadness?

And never fail to be there for us?

Nothing better for the hungering soul

or brimming delight is the music that is always

there for the simple taking and giving.

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An die musik ~ To Music
Composed by Franz Schubert

Lyrics
O gracious Art, in how many grey hours
When life's fierce orbit encompassed me,
Have you kindled my heart to warm love,
And charmed me into a better world!

Oft has a sigh, issuing from your harp,
A sweet, blessed chord of yours,
Thrown open the heaven of better times;
O gracious Art, for that I thank you!

May 10, 2009

Dear Evalyn,

You have nurtured your gift of music and shared it with so many of us. I want you to know how it touched me and helped me find my own personal relationship with the gift of music. A Chinese grandfather of one of my students once said to me, that a music teacher gives of her soul to her students. We have all been your students in a way. And we have all benefited from you as you have given of your soul to us. I can’t imagine life without the communion music provides for my best self. Music is a sacred gift and it was entrusted to you and you let it sing out beautifully.

With love and affection

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Softly and Tenderly - another version
Uploaded by hoover4000


Evalyn is the girl in the middle
My dad is the one holding the ball.


Ferne Wiles Hammel
Mother of Evalyn, my dad, Mark, Harold, Jerald and Richard

In a portion of a tribute to her mom, Evalyn wrote this:

...Mom walked with me to Salamonie Avenue to Bessie Branstrator’s home for my piano lessons, which was about 3 ½ miles one way. (Before this, Bessie came to our house.) Mom’s day was busy, but she still took the time and would wait for me, and we returned home and she never seemed to mind the walk. She sat beside me while I practiced because I wanted her there, not because I wouldn't practice, which Mark tells folks. She played hymns, but I don’t recall her helping much with the music.

I enjoyed helping Mom wash clothes because we had a wringer washer, and it was fun sending those sheets, etc., through, but Mom was always watchful that I didn’t get my hands caught in the wringer.

Pop was busy earning a living for his family, and Mom would walk to Grandma and Grandpa Wiles’ home on Walnut Street which was about four miles, and we all walked to church, but I don’t remember minding this. But maybe, my brothers were afraid to say if they did. We had no car, and we attended revival meetings for two weeks, every night except Saturdays, and then sometimes we had church on this night, also. Church was 1.8 miles, and some nights were mighty cold or hot. One cold, cold day, Mom walked to John Tipton school with extra blankets for we kids and then while some of us got rides home, Mom walked back to our home in the frigid weather. I never understood where the other coats came from. This brings back sad memories to me, thinking how cold Mom must have been!

Mom was the buffer between we kids and Pop who was always serious; at least, this is my recollection of him. The summer before I entered high school, Mom made an appointment for me to get my pigtails cut and permed. A cab brought me back to Grandma and Grandpa Hammel’s who lived next door to our house, and as I stood on their sidewalk, Pop asked Mom who that was standing over there. I never knew what Mom told our Pop, but he never said a word to me about me shorn locks.

....our Pop ...said to me as we stood by Mom’s casket, "There lays an angel!"

I’m sure there was mental as well as physical suffering when Mom’s body was taken over by acromegaly (caused by dysfunction of the pituitary gland) which made here bones grow. She told me this happened when she was pregnant with our brother, Mark, so this was the way I always knew her...

...Mom loved to work outdoors and especially in her flower gardens. She had a beautiful variety of Iris, and I wish we still had the yellow rose bush which grew by the sidewalk in the back. She also, mowed the lawn with a push mower, and she would say she walked to Mt. Etna and back when she completed this job. I remember how she would rinse out her wet clothes and hang them on the clothesline to dry before they were laundered.

Evalyn's mom - my Grandma Hammel

On May 10, 1963, Mom had been working in her flower garden in the front of the house, and Pop had been working in his shop in the garage when he looked out and couldn’t see Mom. He found her in the house where she had laid all of the grandkids pictures down, face up. We think she had a premonition that she was not going to be here very long. Pop asked Mom if she would like to ride along to Baer Field to get some lumber. On the way Mom gasped a big breath and was gone just that quickly. Pop said he thought she was choking on her tongue so he tried to get hold of it to help her but with no success. Pop called me from Ft. Wayne with the news. I had lost my best friend and my precious Mom. Our pop was a very distraught and lost man after the death of our Mom, or Mother, as Mark always called her.