All the Little Children: An Inclusionary Tale

By J. Kelly Poorman

When Robert came for a visit to his home town, he didn't know that God had brought him back to care give his mother. He goes back to the church he was raised in and found that him being gay was something that a lot of people couldn't understand. Robert is not ashamed to be an out and proud Christian gay man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 14, 2008
• ISBN: 9780595630400

J. Kelly Poorman

J. Kelly Poorman got the idea for this book while walking down the streets of Pasadena, California, and seeing the pink line down the middle of the road. Right then, he knew there was a story. Writing what he knows, Kelly worked five Rose Parades in Pasadena and Portland.

Book preview

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Laying the ground work

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Author’s notes

There are many reason’s to write this book and play. The comments you read on the first page were just a few that I have gotten over the years. I have handed out my play, All the Little Children fresh off my printer and after getting a lot of wonderful response I felt that it needed a wider distribution then multi colored binders passed from one person to the next. I have published two other books and thought that it would help if I put the play into the form of a book and, heck, why not throw a book in there, just for giggles.

I truly feel that God had helped and guided my way in so many things.

Also by

J. Kelly Poorman

Roman and Jules

The Long Pink Line

I would like to dedicate this book to all the boys and girls, gay and straight, bi or transgendered that have so many choices in their lives. May the world around them fill their hearts and souls with love and acceptance for who they are, not what they are.

I would like to thank the many people that have stepped up to help me in this project from holding my hand to correcting my spelling. The list could go on and on but here are just a few.

Bobbi

Paige

Terri

Barbara

Nanci

And every person that said, Do you need an editor?

All the Little Children

An Inclusionary Tale

The book

Prologue

Robert struggled to keep the door from closing while having his arms and fingers occupied with paint cans.

Per his M. O., he was early and the first inside the Friendship Hall.

Just when he thought the door was going to stay open, it slipped from the door stop and slammed shut.

The echo of the wooden door hitting the metal frame flooded Robert’s mind with memories of slamming doors of the past. The joy of the closed door to keep away the cold after Christmas Caroling; Hearing that sound when the bullies had given up searching for him; his safe haven behind the preacher’s robes in the utility closet.

Looking around the bare walls of the hall, he could see the years of neglect. Tape marks where Sunday school kids had proudly displayed their pictures of baby Jesus that mostly resembled a blob.

On the floor were scuff marks from moving the room dividers, week after week, adjusting from worship space to class rooms.

Now that the main church had fire damage from a local girl trying to keep warm after running away from home, this space was coming back to the forefront.

But first, the makeover.

This morning the whole church family was converging on Friendship Hall to scrap, paint, scrub and refresh.

A new life for the old building.

A new life. Robert thought.

He wondered if there was a fresh coat of paint for his life.

Not that he was complaining. He truly felt that he was where God wanted him to be. But he was bored.

Moving back to his home town after living in Los Angeles for 25 years, there were things that he missed.

Big screen movies. A good Matzo Ball soup at three in the morning. OK. Any Matzo Ball soup at any time.

And no gay life. That was the biggest void.

But he knew that God had brought him back home for a reason.

God’s timing had been precise. Two weeks into his three week visit, Ester, his mother, had congestive heart failure and a torn rotator cuff on the same night.

She would have been on her own if he hadn’t been there.

God is good.

The pounding on the door brought Robert back to reality. He heard his mother hitting the door with her cane. Feeling a little like Henry Aldrich, he yelled, Coming Mother.

Little did he know that this day was going to start a chain reaction that was going to bring him the excitement that he yearned for.

Some good, some heart breaking, but he would never be bored again.

Chapter One

 Laying the ground work

0:35

Amen!!! We are done. Pastor George could hear his sentiment repeated all over the room.

It took a long ten hours of hard work and good fellowship to complete the room.

There wasn’t man, woman or child that didn’t have some trace of Sunshine Gold paint on some part of their body.

For the most part, the women had retained the kitchen area as their turf. The new stove, refrigerator and dish washer had been preset but everything that didn’t move and some that did, got cleaned and polished to a high shine.

The smells coming from the kitchen promised, then delivered, wonderful treats and meals through the hard day.

From 86 year old Ester Morrison to 16 month old Cary MacClary, all hands were working.

Some of the more enthusiastic ladies worked with the kids to create wall hangings to decorate the room dividers. The children had quite the task getting each helper to mark their painted hands into a pattern that was pleasing to the eye. At a certain point, the kids let fun dictate the design.

There were many generations of families working in the space. One group had four generations toiling side by side.

This was a church that was very family oriented.

Robert and his mother fit the profile of a part of the congregation. Ester had been a member of the church since her family had come to town when she was one year old. She had only gone from the church for five years while she moved with her husband, and that was only ten miles away.

Robert had to laugh at Ester’s All the way in the town you were born…. Everything was relative. He remembered traveling 45 miles one way to go to a good movie theater in Los Angeles, and Ester complained if there were more then four cars at a red light.

Ester was a faith filled Christian. She prayed for a good marriage. Even when her husband beat her, she prayed to make herself a better wife. When her husband started hitting their children, a line was crossed that made her pray even