Ye Olde Ice Cream Parlour

Please excuse me. I'm not a frequent visitor to this board, just looking for unused threads to post a stream on consciousness. Feel free to ignore.

I suppose I wouldn't be too surprised to find out that MLK Jr did not believe in virgin birth, or had at least entertained the idea. I was floored to discover that my grandfather held this belief.

He was a UCC minister trained at Eden Theological Seminary, now seemingly one of the hotbeds of liberal theology.

That surpirsed me to no end since grandpa seem a fairly strict, somewhat traditional fellow of German upbringing.

When I vistited him in small-town central MO the one thing I remember as a kid was that, during one service on Sunday, the doors were open to the early Summer breeze. In walked a dog off the street, up the aisle past the whole congregation and up onto the podium, where it layed down next to my Grandfather.

He was in the middle of a sermon. He paused and then said, "doesn't it say in the scripture, preach the gospel unto every living creature?"

That really impressed me. I was maybe 8 years old.

I was driving West on rt 70 across the country one Summer. I passed the exit to that little town where my grandfather preached so long ago.

I decided to visit the church. It was still there.

After my Grandfather died, the little town had never been happy with anyone else.

One by one, pastors came and went.

Many years passed. Finally, pastor Mary arrived. Even after more than 38 years I think, my grandfather is still spoken of. Why did they like this man so much? I came to find that pastor Mary, when she arrived, tried to learn all she could about this man.