Page One

Page: 1 P.2 P.3 P.4 P.5 P.6 P.7 "An Open Letter..."

~ THE OZONE SKIP ~
* (Definition)

PROLOGUE:

Rockclift, Reverend Bail, the First Church of the Gadarene, What Happened, How These Sermons Came To Be In My Possession.

"If for any reason the parent particle were to disappear, the virtual particles could not be reabsorbed, and would be promoted to real ones. This is what happens when matter meets antimatter; for example, when a proton meets an antiproton they suddenly disappear and some mesons, or perhaps photons, from the virtual cloud are left with nowhere to go. They therefore appear in the universe as new, real particles of matter, their Heisenberg loan having been cleared once and for all by the mass-energy of the sacrificed proton-antiproton pair."

Paul Davies

Other Worlds

"Surely you know that you are God's temple, where the Spirit of God dwells. Anyone who destroys God's temple will himself be destroyed by God, because the temple of God is holy; and that temple you are."

1 Corinthians 3.l6-l7 (NEB)

~PART ONE~

Rockclift in the l960s was a small, conservative community, nestled into the cleft of an ancient granite face in the Great Smoky Mountains of Eastern Tennessee.

The mouth of the cleft was so narrow, there was only one road in or out called Greentree Street, which went right past the Rockclift First Church of the Gadarene, pastored by Reverend Harry N. Bail .

Reverend Bail was famous locally for standing among the tombstones weekday afternoons, roaring like a dragon at the hippies and peaceniks and rock stars, who according to him were taking over not only this nation, but indeed the whole world.

Now in those days, in order to get anything even remotely hip or cool, we had to travel all the way around a huge lake to the next large town twelve miles to the west. But Reverend Bail was always waiting for us at the mouth of the cleft, one bony finger trembling before one narrowed "evil eye," shouting and shaking his wrists above his head like someone forever breaking free from invisible fetters. And although many of us had begun to complain among ourselves, and some of us had even complained to our parents and our teachers, our parents and our teachers refused to complain to Reverend Bail on our behalf, they said, because he was "a man of God; a man of the Bible."

Sunday mornings, eleven o'clock sharp, there he was, calm as you please, back in his pulpit, pleading like a lamb for contributions; declaring his ministry to be the only real hope for this generation, designed as it was to seal us away from the ways of the world, while at the same time preparing us for world evangelism.

He loved to tell the story about the time he saw his first love-in on network television; how the Lord had lifted him then and there with a permanent, rock-hard commitment to "turn these young people around, and fill them to overflowing with the fullness of Him that filleth!" The only thing hindering his mission -- God's mission, he said -- was the hippies and peaceniks on TV, and the rock stars on the radio. These two "false prophets," according to him, had been empowered by Satan to "shut up the reign of our enjoyment of our own hard-earned prosperity in this nation following the Great Depression and World War II, and are the cause and the reason behind every single moral and spiritual crisis now plaguing America!"

In order for God's kingdom on this earth to be established, Reverend Bail assured us, these two false prophets must first be conquered. And this conquering could only be accomplished by the power of "He who ascended out of the bottomless pit , and whose power is today manifested in the Body of His true believers!"

With our help, he explained, not he alone but God working through him could, and would, conquer them. Without our help, however, he -- and by implication God -- could do nothing. And as it turned out, he was right.

For as time went on, and the 60s became the 70s, and the 70s became the 80s, and the 80s the 90s, people kept running to and fro and their knowledge kept increasing. Until at last they figured they'd heard enough and just stopped coming -- gradually at first, then faster and faster as it got towards the end. Finally one dark night -- without saying good-bye; without leaving any forwarding address -- Reverend Bail simply vanished from the universe as real particles of matter.

The church building and the grounds were snapped up by a beautiful middle-aged woman named Myrtle , whom everyone just called "Myrt."

Long determined to purchase the property and raze the church, Myrt had organized a community-based project to build a children's play-park in its stead -- before Reverend Bail had even given up and was gone! -- to be paid for with community funds, built with community supplies, community hands, and planned in close consultation with the community children.

She worked tirelessly, going door-to-door, signing up anyone and everyone (including me, who swore to never sign up for anything again), until we were all pledged to come every weekend with our children and work together until it was completed.

I reminded her I had no small children of my own (nor even any wife at present); but she just smiled. There would be a hot local band , playing all the latest hit songs, Digger-style refreshments, just like at an old-fashioned love-in; and plenty for everyone to do for the sake of all our children.

"An Open Letter Addresses One Readers Concern"