Washougal Writers

Vern Schanilec March 4, 2018 About every 500 years something significant happens within religion. There’s always a give or take of 50 to 150 years so don’t set your fitbit by it, but let’s keep with the interval theme. I will start with the time of Abraham around 2000 BC, give or take 100 years. You could ask why I don’t start with the mythic time of Adam and Eve. I don’t see their existence in the framework of religion because no formal institution was in place. God was still the boss. Abram (whose name was lengthened to Abraham) is asked by God to walk with his family 1000 miles from today’s Persian Gulf, the land of Ur, northward up the Fertile Crescent of today’s Iraq as bordered by the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers unto what was known then as Canaan. At the top of the Crescent his brother Haran was left behind along with his beautiful daughters Rebekah and Rachel who would later be courted by their cousins Isaac and Jacob. This was the origins of the Semitic group of Hebre...

Vern Schanilec January 13, 2018            Willie Nelson and Waylan Jennings both recorded the song Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys . The lyrics advise “Let 'em be doctors and lawyers and such.” Joseph and Mary may just have taken their advice, anachronistically of course, judging by their observation of their son Jesus and how he later matured. “You’re a bright boy son, why don’t you go to the Temple and pursue doctorates in Messiahship and Law."            He followed their advisement, submitted to Temple teachings, and upon returning to Nazareth hung out his shingle (metaphorically speaking) and began a career as an itinerant spokesman for God which would test both his ecclesiastical and legal knowledge.            How do I dare speak of Jesus in such earth-bound and mordant terms. The evidence will sp...

William Caldwell December 30, 2017 Seventeen-fifty-four, where was George Washington then? Stretching his chains and rods in the Cumberland? Preparing for the lead up to the French and Indian War? I forget the exact dates of his involvement in either endeavor. G. W., my hero who was he and how was he forming the consciousness and presence to become the Constitutional Congresses military arm, desirous of leading the nascent nation into battle against the red coated menace. They say he strode about the meeting hall in uniform, rampant, ready to stand in the face of the Brit and Crown. Yes, how does one make oneself? As for me I have spent a lot of time looking into the face of children. They light my world – which I must say, is sorely needed since too much of the remainder of my day is spent in the dark tunnels of a mirror, a black slated glass some days, a black velvet drape others, a black maw, a black orchid, a black whatever, black anything. It only need be black because at t...