The Gospels According to Reverend Ike

By Karen LaMantia

Different Minds are at work at the Abiding Light Sanitarium for the Mentally Ill. Ike The Preacher Ham is admitted there, to learn what the world needs to know to change minds and hearts, to help heal Planet Earth. Then, it is back to Mobile, to see how the Gospels help people make peace and harmony and get ready for Union.
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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 10, 2003
• ISBN: 9781453582985

Karen LaMantia

Karen LaMantia is an environment fan and activist and a very good listener as she created these tales and stories, taken from the fabric of reality, a healed Earth, that she knows best. Karen does a standup comedy routine for a sustainable future and is available to speak to book clubs and to appear at book readings for fundraising and fun-raising for your charities and causes related to Planet health, safety and for fun. You can contact her through the website wwww.earthneighborhood.com

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Copyright © 2003 by Karen LaMantia.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Characters, times and places in this book are works of fiction just waiting to happen in our past, present and future. Similarities to characters living, dead or yet to be born are purely coincidental.

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 YOU GET WHAT YOU PRAY FOR

CHAPTER 2 THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE

CHAPTER 3 TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY

CHAPTER 4 TO EVERY THING THERE IS A SEASON

CHAPTER 5 SEEK AND YEA SHALL FIND

CHAPTER 6 TO HONOR AND TO CHERISH

CHAPTER 7 COME UNTO ME AS THE LITTLE CHILDREN

CHAPTER 8 AND THEY BEHELD THE HEAVENLY CITY OF GOD

CHAPTER 9 WHEN TWO OR MORE ARE GATHERED IN MY NAME

CHAPTER 10 AND THE WORD WAS LIGHT

CHAPTER 11 MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE UNTO THE LORD

CHAPTER 12 A TIME FOR EVERY PURPOSE

EPILOG

Dedicated to East—Direction of Healing and Inspiration.

May we move in your Light, together.

THE MESSAGE SERIES

The Gods Played Here

Find out what happens in a Neighborhood when people get The Message it is time to clean up Planet Earth. Positive change starts in Mobile but gets around, fast, once the Tiger Preservation Project sets ground rules for a sustainable future. Read The Gods Played Here and learn—

How a Cleaning Lady helps save the world for Tigers and everything else

How military leaders fight battles, worldwide, in an international war of construction

How a song and our favorite soap opera stars help resettle folks living in the Wild

How urban farmers grow portfolios along with their tomatoes and water both with a river of money at the Mobile Stock Exchange

How a receptionist feeds the people of the world on a minimum wage

And many more stories of positive change that inspire and entertain!

Mobile Tales

More adventures with the folks you met in The Gods Played Here and some new arrivals to the Mobile neighborhood before, during and after The Message. Learn all about—

Ways the Sound of Beauty helps transform a school in trouble,

How a con artist makes the most of the UN War of Construction to create heaven on earth,

How Ma’ Rhee Kay does a make-over on neighborhoods and neighbors,

How pie helps feed peace and justice in a Mobile neighborhood and beyond,

And more than twenty other stories for positive change.

And On Line At :

www.earthneighborhood.com

Read on-going adventures of Mobile Neighbors, as they tackle the real problems and perils of our world. They put a bit of humor into stories, to inform and entertain, as they connect you with those who work to change our Planet for better and for real, one Neighborhood at a time. Join us in the ‘hood online, any time!

INTRODUCTION

I told myself, Ike will get things moving in a positive direction. Betsy Ross Jackson explains to her granddaughter.

Who is Ike? She-Bird asks.

He was once known to the world as the Reverend Ike ‘The Preacher’ Ham, and when I saw him walk through the front gates of the Abiding Light Sanitarium for the Mentally Ill, I figured two weeks, tops, and the place will be transformed.

Why’d he go there? She-Bird asks.

Since his days as the leader of the Christian world, he is bound to follow the path of the Holy Ones. His trip to the Abiding Light continued Ike’s search for knowledge, wisdom and plain old common sense. It taught the world a thing or two, as well.

What did he learn?

Ike met people the world calls crazy. Betsy Ross says. Many of the greatest teachers and guides in Tiger Country would be called crazy, if they lived in the USA. In fact, the Tiger Country language calls such people ‘gifted’. Ike learns from those gifted ones and brings their gifts to the world.

Why were you there? She-Bird asks.

The very oldest stories told in Tiger Country tell of this happening. Betsy Ross explains. ‘Our people are taught the stories as both history and prophecy, when we are children. Of course, we must witness these stories as they come to pass."

How do you know the stories came true?

It would be like a devout Christian failing to recognizing the story of Noah and the Arc, were it to unfold before their eyes. Betsy Ross explains.

So, what did he learn? She-Bird asks, curious about the details of this great healing.

Listen. Betsy Ross promises. I’ll tell you.

CHAPTER 1

YOU GET WHAT YOU PRAY FOR

Ike has not been back to Mobile since The Message, so it is only by chance the Preacher is in town to help Cecelia Vandee’s son, Bobby Rae. Ike returns to sign the final papers that give The Tower of Salvation, and its broadcast studios, to the Friends of the Planet Tiger Preservation Project. The Tower was once his worldwide TV ministry headquarters, but Ike no longer preaches to the Christian world or to any other.

Heck! You folks can put this Tower to better use than I ever did. Ike tells Howard Beau and Alberta Brightfoot, the TPP’s Directors, on the day he left town for God. You can broadcast messages that just might make a heaven, right here on Earth. All I did was scare the Bejesus out of people.

Scary or not, Ike’s preaching had once been mighty popular. Three days after The Message, most of the Christian world watched his final service from The Tower and his sermon to the multitudes was a brief explanation of his change of mind about hellfire and damnation.

All the stuff I been telling you is a lot of hooey. Ike tells his universal flock. Be thankful that God couldn’t make you any less than perfect and quit worrying about hell. Just concentrate on kindness. Jesus was big on kindness. Ike reminds them. I’m sure He’d agree with me a hundred and two percent. G’won now and save each other and your Planet. I’m not about to tell you how to do that. Listen to the Tiger Preservation Project folks. They’re the experts.

When Ike’s global followers realize they are saved, they are mighty happy. Most decide to get to work and save their Planet, in turn. Ike wants to help, too. Like most folks, he knows not the first thing about doing that.

Heck, I don’t know shit about Tigers. Ike admits to Alberta, the TPP’s Chief Science Officer, before he leaves to go in search of Creator. Like most people, I need the advice of experts. I want your Tiger Preservation Project to use my Tower to give the rest of us something to listen to that’s worth the air time.

Since Tiger Preservation Project experts are the ones who coordinate the cleanup of Planet Earth, they do have a few things to share. Ike’s broadcast network makes them able to say those things to more people, in more places, than any other commercial or government broadcast system. Instead of saving souls, the Tower now saves Tigers and everything else.

Get some advice about how to live on Earth. Ike tells those who want him to return to his radio and TV pulpit. What I told you about hell or heaven is beside the point. Start taking care of a Planet we can do something about and leave heaven to the Almighty.

Ike disappears from Mobile and is not seen again, except for a brief appearance at a meeting of the world’s religious leaders in Jerusalem, a week after The Message. Holy guys and gals gather there to endorse a plan for International Zones of the Human Spirit where anyone can visit, for as long as they want, providing they mind their manners. Ike is one who confirms the designation of thousands of spiritual zones to the world press, and last saw Bobby Rae Vandee at that meeting.

But you met Bobby Rae long before The Message. Ms. Vandee reminds Ike, as she catches him leaving the Tower. I was one of your first parishioners, at your church in that old movie theater over on Biloxi Ave. I brought my boy to see you there.

Of course. Ms.Vandee, isn’t it? Ike recalls.

Ike owes his success as a preacher, in part, to his ability to remember almost anyone he has ever met and match a name to his or her face. His gift would never let him forget Bobby Rae Vandee, or the day the eleven-year-old boy told Ike he had a voice that people would believe, above and beyond all rhyme or reason.

He was the one that told you to go on the radio. Cecelia Vandee recalls. You recollect that?

Bobby Rae compared the Preacher’s persuasive powers of speech to those of Adolph Hitler—a man known to talk a lot of people into believing almost anything he cared to say. Ike never forgot the boy’s warning; Watch what you tell people. They’ll believe every word.

Of course I remember your boy. Ike assures Bobby Rae’s mama. Must have been twenty years ago. What’s your son doing these days?

The last time Ike saw her offspring, Bobby Rae was weaving in and out of time and space with InDios People of Australia. Ike has no doubts they are InDios, or In God as some say, for Bobby Rae and the People Who Sang First and Are Singing Still led the entire congregation of world religious leaders into the Spirit Land. The trip quickly helps the convocation reach their unanimous decision to approve the International Zones of the Human Spirit program.

Ike wonders whether Mobile is a stop on Bobby Rae’s current time/space tour. A dynamic city, as the site of the global headquarters of the Tiger Preservation Project and other programs for creative change, Mobile is not the sleepy little burg it once was. Even so, Ike doubts that much inter-dimensional time travel goes on there. As Ike is always the first to admit, little does he know.

Bobby Rae’s daddy died a few days back and my boy knew about it, somehow. He came on home to help. the distraught woman tells Ike, who has the impression her son’s visit has done little to comfort the grieving widow.

Of course I was happy to see him. Cecelia admits. The last time I laid eyes on Bobby Rae he was in the eighth grade. He left Mobile then and he hasn’t been back since.

It must have been quite a homecoming. Ike speculates. What’s your boy doing these days?

He’s doing what he always does. He spends his time listenin’ to God all. Ms. Vandee explains. But when a grown man does it, it’s a whole lot different than when a boy does. she sobs, as she adds, They put him in the loony bin, Reverend. They say Bobby Rae is nuts and you got to get him out of that Abiding Light Sanitarium.

*      *      *

Ike is under the mistaken impression that all the hospitals, care homes and treatment centers for the insane are closed after The Message. It is true that many such places go out of business, as better ways are found to keep people creatively employed, housed and fed, but the Abiding Light Sanitarium is one of the few such institutions still in operation. Out in the middle of the Wild, beyond the official Mobile Urban area boundary, the Abiding Light is the only stop on the rail line that operates between Mobile Urban Center and their state capital. The Abiding Light also remains open because it is an International Zone of the Human Spirit. The Residents of the Abiding Light know this, but few of the Staff are aware. If Staff knew anything about the Human Spirit they would have been out of there decades ago.

In fact, the Sanitarium’s remaining Residents stay to help the Staff. Call them crazy, but they fully appreciate how their Staff are disabled to work in the world outside Sanitarium walls. Abiding Light employees are much too warped, from decades spent there, to be able to contribute to the Planet’s healing. Deeply entrenched in their own version of sanity, from years of believing in a status quo that is insane, they can ignore almost anything healthy. Even worse, they label it sick. Though Residents realize it would be unkind to the Staff, as well as to the rest of the world, if the place were closed, the Abiding Light Staff have no clue that those labeled mentally ill stay to help them out.

Bobby Rae’s arrival is an answer to many prayers. Since the young man had the ability to assist the entire world in its process of making peace, he certainly can help the seven, remaining Abiding Light Staff move on. After all, they have no actual physical limitations, nor are there external pressures from their society to stop them leaving. In fact, since the Message, a whole world of positive change is open to them, as it is to all others.

So, what is stopping them?

They are stopping them. They have disabled themselves by squelching any remotely creative impulse, in order to ‘fit in’ with their group. They also perfect a process which labels any creativity the Sanitarium’s Residents have as ‘sick’, to keep them as patients for as long as possible. The healthier the Residents get, the more they are labeled as disturbed. This combination of factors creates a world apart and a world that fights creative change like the devil.

*      *      *

Heaven help these poor souls! Prentice Van Dee intones, before he slips on some pigeon shit and drops to his death. Perhaps it is his prayer, uttered before he falls off the roof of the Abiding Light, which calls Bobby Rae back to Mobile.

*      *      *

What the heck is Bobby Rae doing at that funny farm? Ike asks Cecilia Vandee.

It’s where his daddy died. Ms. Vandee explains. Prentice was out there to fix the roof. Bobby Rae says he was called, but I don’t know how his daddy got a phone number for our boy.

From what Ike remembers of Bobby Rae, he doubts a telephone was involved in the message that brought Bobby Rae to the Abiding Light. Ike is not about to go into all that with the man’s mama, who looks ready to check herself into someplace like the Sanitarium, if she gets one more piece of news she is not prepared to process.

Why don’t you go on down to the Beauty Spot and get your hair done. Ike suggests. I’ll go to the Sanitarium and see what I can do for Bobby Rae.

Ms. Vandee’s eyes light up and she breathes a sigh of relief. That’s a wonderful idea! The Spot is exactly what I need.

*      *      *

The Beauty Spot is a salon in an older Mobile Neighborhood and many of its patrons, like Ms.Vandee, go there to hang out at a supportive, creative place. Others go there to come up with good ideas to help their world. Both men and women find the Spot’s current events discussion groups, as well as assistance they get there with personal, neighborhood or community problems, mighty helpful. Sometimes they get their hair cut or nails done, as well.

We don’t gossip, here. Coreen Luella Turner, the Spot’s owner, explains to any newcomer. We talk about what’s real and ways we can make our best dreams come true. We don’t discuss irrelevant nonsense, either. she adds. We leave that to our politicians.

While Cecelia Vandee has her hair washed and set by City Councilwoman, Letty Price Jacobson, Bobby Rae’s mother is able to relax enough to cry about the recent death of her husband. With the funeral and all of Bobby Rae’s problems, she has not had a moment to contemplate her personal loss. Prentice was a good man and she will miss him. Letty just lets her cry, undisturbed.

Letty is a beautician and the best, local news analyst at the Beauty Spot. Recently elected to the Mobile Urban Council, supported in her campaign by Beauty Spot patrons, Letty frequently drops by the Salon to hear what people think. She polls people on their opinions about issues, to keep herself informed and to keep her hairdressing skills current.

This politics thing may come and go, Letty tells Cecelia Vandee, as she hands the grieving woman another box of tissues. but hair is here to stay. I may run for governor next year, but I’m not letting my cosmetology license expire. You can bet on that.

Ms. Vandee sniffs her agreement and sobs into a tissue, as Letty massages the widow’s scalp. Right now, crying is what Cecelia needs to do and the Beauty Spot is all about giving people what they need. Had the Abiding Light Sanitarium for the Mentally Ill adopted such a therapeutic practice, the place would have cured those who walk through its doors in a jiffy. Unfortunately, for both Staff and Residents, they do no such thing.

During the time Ms. Vandee’s hair is being blown dry under Letty’s expert hands, Ike is in the front hallway of the Abiding Light Sanitarium, expressing his concern about their policy that bars new Residents from having visitors for a two week period after their admission.

Lord-O-Bove. Ike tells Head Nurse Prunella Wistern Cantrell. What if a person is put in here by mistake? What if the way they’re acting is the way they always act and it’s only you folks who thinks they’re nuts?

We watch them for a couple of weeks and then the Doctor decides. Prunella tells Ike through a double-glass partition, reinforced by a layer of chicken wire. We don’t care how they were before. We just care how they are for the two weeks we see them here.

Ike has a sinking feeling that someone like Bobby Rae, always a highly unusual person, has never and will never fit into the Sanitarium definition of sanity. Bobby Rae fits into very few people’s definition of sanity. It should be noted that his eccentric behaviors have not stopped him from becoming a world-renowned musician. People everywhere hear his music and know Bobby Rae by his professional name, The Ear.

I want to speak to the Psychiatrist. Ike insists.

This demand perks Nurse Prunella right up. Her face bends into the closest she concedes to a smile, as she pops the automatic door control switch. The heavy metal door gives an ominous buzz, as Ike enters the facility. As he walks the halls, Ike recalls that the Sanitarium was once a stately mansion, belonging to the Sommes Family. It was a TB hospital during the Depression and a mental hospital after World War II. Such institutions were once fashionable, before bureaucrats found they could get more money out of taxpayers by building prisons to house society’s misfits and the unwanted.

This is almost too easy. Ike thinks to himself, as Nurse Prunella escorts him to Dr. Brainburn’s office, waving to Orderly Hector Francisco Escobar to accompany them down the hall.

Hector complies at once, to keep his job long enough to earn sufficient money to pay for his return to El Salvador. He knows that Staff are trying to keep the Sanitarium open, any way they can. These days, people come to the Abiding Light less and less frequently, as rumors spread that many never return from the visit. Hector does not hesitate in his response to the Head Nurse, or Prunella’s threat to have him committed, too, might be realized. He knows that those who ask to see the Psychiatrist are staying for sure.

Dr. Brainburn will see you now. Nurse Prunella announces, as she opens the door to the office.

I don’t have this man’s chart! Dr. Brainburn, an elderly man, pouring over a pile of charts exclaims, eyeing the intruders.

Like the Reverend Ike, Dr. Brainburn never forgets a face. He recognizes Ike at once and the prospect of a famous patient fires the psychiatrist’s imagination, as he contemplates the revitalization of the sanitarium to its former glory, the golden days when the wealthy and influential flocked for ‘rest cures’, to the Sanitarium’s once-luxurious surroundings.

Ha! Just teasing, Reverend. I’d know you without a chart. What can I do you for? Doctor Brainburn jokes.

He is a little deaf and often makes remarks, to which others need not reply. The doctor rarely notices if they do respond because, after decades as a therapist, he rarely listens to anyone.

I’ve come for a friend of mine. Ike states, as Dr. Brainburn scribbles away, glancing up at Ike with a practiced stare, nodding his head empathetically from time to time. His name is Bobby Rae Vandee and he’s been here a couple of days.

Mum huh! Dr. Brainburn responds at intervals, as though listening.

The MD appears to take copious notes while Ike explains the reason for his visit. The doctor’s writings have little to do with what is said. He is making plans for a new spa, at the refurbished Abiding Light of his dreams.

I’ve come to get him out. Ike emphasizes, leaning toward the psychiatrist.

Ike has dealt with enough old geezers to recognize a deaf person when he sees one. He also wants to check out what the doctor is writing but Brainburn draws back, clutching his notes to his chest as though guarding the crown jewels.

ORDERLY! the Psychiatrist bellows. Take this man to Ward 3!

Hector enters and takes the note Dr. Brainburn hands him, then motions for Ike to follow.

Thank you, Doctor. Ike says and holds out his hand to the physician.

I don’t touch people. Dr. Brainburn responds, looking at Ike’s hand as though it were contagious. You never know where they’ve been.

Then he cracks up laughing.

Is he really the psychiatrist here? Ike asks, following Hector down a series of hallways toward Ward 3. He seems a little crazy to me.

"We call people residing here mentally disturbed, Senior. Hector corrects Ike. Crazy is a word without dignity or respect."

Quite right, young man. Ike agrees, as the Orderly unlocks the massive door that leads to the dignified and respected Residents of the Abiding Light.

Once through that door, Ike enters another universe. He recalls the feeling he had as a small child, when his mother took him to a three-ring circus. Too young at the time to know exactly what is going on, the lights, the sounds and colors both frighten and