Free Home to Harmony by Philip Gulley Page B

Meeting about the birds and the bees.
    The next Sunday, Dale and his wife came to church armed with pictures of flowers, of pistils and stamens. He spoke at length about pollination. Then he asked if there were any questions. There weren’t.
    Dale reported back to the September meeting of elders. He said, “Well, I got them squared around. We won’t be having any sex problems in this church. You can bet on that.”
    Frank asked him what he had talked about, specifically. He wanted details.
    Dale said, “Pistils and stamens. They got the message.”
    Frank asked, “Did you tell them about the holding part? How the holding part is the best. How it’s sweeter over the years. How they need to wait until they’re married. That when love and commitment aren’t in it, it’ll leave you feeling empty and cheap. Did you tell them that?”
    Dale said he implied it.
    Frank erupted, “Good golly, man, you got to put the hay down where the goats can get it.”
    That’s when Frank volunteered to talk with the youth of Harmony Friends Meeting about the birds and the bees.
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    I went with him. He didn’t bring any pictures of flowers or pistils and stamens. Mostly, he just talked. He talked about his wife Martha, and how they met, and how tempted they had been, and how they waited. He spoke of how he missed her during the war, how he kept her picture in his shirt pocket, next to his heart. He hung his head and wiped his eyes and told how much he missed her now. Then he told them sex was a gift of love from God and that’s what made it sacred. And how it’s our job not to cheapen it.
    Then he asked if the kids had any questions.
    One boy raised his hand and asked if it was all right to pick flowers from a neighbor’s garden.
    Frank asked him what that had to do with sex. The boy wasn’t sure, but that’s what Dale had told him—not to pick flowers from your neighbor’s garden.
    Well, that’s how things get done in this place. We put things off and put things off until someone like Frank gets fed up and wades in and gets the job done. And if that doesn’t work, we wait until Dale Hinshaw goes fishing, and then we do it.
    But there are some things that shouldn’t wait, things we need to talk about right now. Making sure our children know right from wrong and good from bad is oneof them. I wrote it on my to-do list: Talk with your sons about sex.
    Dale lent me his pistil and stamen pictures. Frank said if I had any questions, he’d be happy to help.
    By golly, Dale Hinshaw was right. If you hire a church secretary, sex is never far behind.

Ten
This Callous Pride
    O f all the things I like about summer, what I like most is that we don’t hold Sunday school. It wasn’t my idea—it’s been that way as long as I can remember.
    The Sunday before Memorial Day we hold a Sunday school picnic after meeting. Each class does a recitation. It’s the same every year. The children sing “Jesus Loves Me,” though in watching them you certainly couldn’t fault Jesus if He found some of them easier to love than others. The ladies of the Mary and Martha Sunday school class recite a poem, and Bob Miles Sr., who teaches the Live Free or Die class, leads everyone in the Pledge of Allegiance. He stands on a picnic table, leads the pledge, then advises the rest of us where the food line starts, even though we’ve been lining up the same way since 1964 and could do it in our sleep.
    The picnic tables are set up behind the meetinghouse, underneath the trees, alongside the parking lot.The line forms at the basketball goal, which Dale Hinshaw wants to take down so the teenagers will hang out somewhere else. The women of the Mary and Martha class are first in line, then the men of the Live Free or Die class, then the families with children, then the teenagers—who eat fast, then shoot Horse at the basketball goal.
    It requires no