This is the fourth and last in a series on prayer in my life.

Prayer

I was a VISTA Volunteer (Volunteers in Service to America)  in 1966, working in the War on Poverty in Bay City, Michigan.  I first worked with migrant workers and then worked for the Bay City Community Action Council.  We set up adult education classes, day care centers, parenting classes etc.  The poor made up the majority of the members on the Council because the whole idea of the War on Poverty was to give a voice to the poor.  This was also the reason the program was eventually scrubbed.  The people in power locally (throughout the country), both Democrats and Republicans didn’t like giving the poor a voice.  I believe this was because they didn’t want anyone interfering with their power.  The Republicans love calling the War on Poverty a failure, when all along they, the Ds and Rs, ruined the program because they really didn’t and don’t want to see the poor have a voice in their lives.  They want to control them and then complain about them, the actual victims.

But that isn’t really what this is about.  I bought a blue Buick Opel for $100.  I had to borrow that amount from the bank and they gave me a lot of trouble over it, but eventually loaned me the money.  I only made $2400 a  year as a volunteer, in addition to my housing.  The car fender was coming off and the drivers side windows had to be nudged up and down. The door had a big dent in it and the heater worked, but not very well.

Two of the girls I served with and I decided to drive home to Oklahoma and California.  One, who had the wonderful name of Faith, lived in Santa Ana, and the other in Oklahoma.  The trip went pretty well except that we got stuck in a terrible snow storm in Socorro, NM where the snow got so deep that we pulled into the first motel we found.  I had to roll down the window to see because the defroster didn’t produce enough heat.  The next day we managed to get to Flagstaff and then onto Santa Ana after spending a night in Lovelock, Nevada where  Faith and I slept in the same bed and kept our hands to ourselves.  (No love locking there) Later, when I told the story at a family gathering, my Uncle Francis asked if I was gay or if there was something wrong with me because I didn’t try to have sex with her. 

Anyway, back to prayer.  Faith came to Stockton and we drove together back to Bay City.  (Now that I write this, I see the irony in the fact that the girl I was traveling with had the name Faith.) Just outside of Lincoln, Nebraska, the car started screaming.  The engine was running fine, so we weren’t sure what was wrong.  We exited the freeway and went to a Buick dealer who put the car on the rack and said the transmission was shot because there wasn’t any fluid in it.  He said we could put fluid in it and maybe we scream out way a few miles further.  I told him I’d have to think about it, which I did as I walked back to the motel where we’d stayed.  Faith agreed that we should put the fluid in and continue.  On the way back to the Buick dealer, I promised to read the Bible fifteen minutes a night for the rest of my life if the transmission would be ok.

The transmission fluid was put in, we paid the guy after wiring my parents for money through Western Union, and headed “on down the road.”  No noise.  You’d have never known there was a problem.  Of course we broke a valve lifter in Olivet, Michigan and I had to have one of my roommates, Greg (three of us shared a house together), come and tow me back to Bay City.  Greg’s family were farmers and the mother was angry about me using her son and not paying him for the gas or his time, but I didn’t have any money.  She insulted the work I was doing and the poor.  I only mention this because about 15 years later, when I went back to visit, she was working for what was left of the poverty program in Bay City.  Miracles do happen in our lives and maybe it wasn’t the transmission repair that was the miracle, but that I have read the whole Bible, especially the New Testament hundred’s of times.  In addition, Greg’s mother changed because of her contact with me.

So those are the big events around prayer in my life.  I still pray most every night and read the Bible or some religious reading every night.  I pray the decades of the rosary when I do my yoga and open the Bible or a religious book to do my reading for the night.  I haven’t been perfect in it, but I’ve made the effort.  As St. Paul would say, I’ve run the good race.  In my case, I’m still trying to run the good race. 

My prayer, as I end this, is that God will bless anyone who reads Duke’s Blog.