"Up from here" Chapter 20: Angels
Over the years as I look back there was one more situation where I needed help. It was back in 1988 when I was working at Universal Studios and Sound Tracks Recording Studio’s in North Hollywood, in Universal City, California. I was attending the North Hollywood Baptist church, where I was Baptist again. The first time I was baptized, it was when I was about eight years old in my stepfather’s Joe Berry and his live in girl friend Ruby’s church back in Macon, Georgia in 1962.
I was born again when I was nineteen years old in a Calvary church in 1973, in Riverside, California when I was working as an assistant manager of a Del Taco in Rialto, California, near Fontana, California, in Riverside County. I would also go to Costa Mesa Calvary Church on Saturdays for the live Christian bands they had at the time there.
I wanted to be baptized again, as I felt I had back slid and needed to be baptized with water this time for the second time in my life, the first time as an eight year old who really did know or what the significance was then to be baptized. On Wednesdays they would have dinner and I would go every Wednesday, because I had very little money because I was still living in cockroach infested motel room and going to the churches begging for food. One night, I put some coupons I had for free stuff at McDonald's as I had no cash to put in the offering basket to cover the dinner. They gave them back to me. It was the thought that counted the most, cannot not say I did not try to donate for my free dinner.
While still living in the cockroach infested motel I walked down the street and decided to go inside this bar. I thought I a few bucks in my pocket, I could use a beer. So I went inside and all I saw were women and no men around. Then, I recognized a very famous person her name was Nancy McKean from the “Facts of Life” playing pool and wanting people to buy her drinks and pay for her pool games. I tried to get to know her, not to hit on her but to be a friend. She wanted nothing to do with me, unless I was willing to pay for her beer and her pool games. I didn’t have that kind of money, besides she had enough females doing that for her, she did not need me, a male to do it. I went back a couple of times and she was talking about a new TV series she had been hired to do. “Murder She Wrote” with Angela Lansbury, had just closed and had it is finale and Nancy McKean was invited to be there to see it on the set as the show was closed.
In fact while working at Universal one night I got tickets for a new sit-com pilot they were doing. Since, I was able to walk around on the back lot without any one knowing about it, if I would have been caught I would have been fired. I even walked past Stephen Spielberg’s office a couple of times, on the lower lot. I walked down a lot of the back lot streets for filming and saw things that you do not see on the Universal Tour.
In fact, I recall one time where the stand by bus was late picking us up from the warehouse. While we were waiting a group of got together and played freeze manikin. As a tour tram would drive by we would all stand still and freeze in whatever position we were in when we heard it coming around the corner. In fact, there was one time as the tour tram came around the corner the tour guide saw us and knew we were not manikins of course and he just cracked up and then said, "Ladies and Gentlemen those manikins that you think you see are employees from the merchandise ware house fooling around and waiting for their stand-by van to pick them up so they can go home". We all just busted up, and fell on the ground laughing while falling all over each other, that was fun.
I then continued on to the sound stage where it was supposed to be and sneaked in and walked and checked things out on the sound stage and bleachers set up for the audience. I even walked into the bleacher to the top row and looked down at the sets. Nobody even asked who I was or what I was doing there, not even the security guard on duty at the time. I did not want to get into trouble or lose my job so I left and went out side to the gates, then waited in line like everyone else that had been given a free ticket for that night’s performance. When it came time for them to let people in, they had a full house and only let three people in and I was not one of them. So I lost out, if I would have stayed inside I may have never been noticed that I did not belong there. I believe, but I am not sure but I think it was the first performance of “Coach” that I missed with Jerry Van Dyke.
I would stand out side of 7/11 pan handling for spare change. Yet, I was working two jobs at the time and still could not make it during the last of the Reagan and beginning of Bush 41 years. I even become a member of the church and they helped me with enough money for my first months rent on a bachelor apartment, and the deposit too. My Mom had come down on a bus to visit me on her way to Riverside, CA to visit her long time friend Ruth. So she spent a couple days staying with me and I sneaked Mom in the back way through the back gate on the lower lot at Universal Studios and we caught a stand-by van to Tour Park at the top of the hill. The stand-by driver did not seem to care that I had my Mom with me; he understood and looked the other way. I took her to all the shows in the Tour Park, the only thing we could not do is take the Universal Studio Tour Tram, but that was OK, my Mom didn’t mind she was with me on vacation from Redding visiting on her way then on to see her long time friend Ruth and her husband Pete. Who had known me before I was born. My Mom left after a couple days spent with me and went on to see her friend and then went back straight through without stopping on her way back to Redding, California, after her visit with her friend Ruth and Pete Meder in Riverside, California.
At the time while working for both Universal full time and part time for Sound Tracks I had no medical or dental coverage at the time and no money if I ever got sick. Then, one day for a couple of days I had a bad tooth that was killing me that needed to be pulled and I had no money to pay for going to a dentist. I was walking home one day after work and I noticed this dentist office I had never noticed before, of course I wasn’t looking either on Lankershim Boulevard, a famous movie street in North Hollywood, the same way they used it in the Movie “Twins” with Danny DeVito and none other than the Govantor of Kalifornia Arnold Shwartzenegger.
I went inside and no one was there, except the receptionist behind the counter and she asked if she could help me and I explained to her my situation that I had about $25.00 in my pocket and that I had a bad tooth that needed to be pulled. She had me sit down and fill out some paper work and when I was done she said the dentist would see me now. I told her I did not think I had enough money to pay the bill. She said, "Don’t worry about that right now we will discuss that after the dentist sees you". I said, "OK", and went inside where the dentist pulled my bad tooth and after he did I came back out and asked the receptionist, "How much I owned her" and she said, "Nothing". I said, “Nothing, what do you mean”? She said, "I am not just the receptionist but I am the dentists’ wife and I can do anything I want too. The charge is FREE". “Wow, I cannot believe it” and she said, “believe it”. And I did.
I shared what had happened to me and how I was blessed at the North Hollywood Baptist church on the next Sunday service I attended there. Then, as time passed I was laid off from Sound Tracks after I went to work for them full time, when Debbie Watson was my boss and manger. Who when I worked for her had me write the script I did for Sound Tracks when I was on the microphone in front of the three screen TV’s as people came out of the recording studios and Star Trek Screen Theatre, next door.
Where before Star Trek was opened to the public I was given the opportunity to help out behind the scenes by playing some of the parts that the audience members would get to do. During the rehearsals Universal paid for all the pizza we could eat. And I did. Plus they had a special performance where all the main characters from Star Trek were on stage for the Trekkie fans that had been invited before they opened up Star Trek Screen Test Theater to the general public. I was back stage and saw everyone with the exception of Leonard Nimoy who was directing" Three Men and a baby". He was the only one I did not see in person that day from back stage. That was before they sold Sound Tracks and I had new owners who did not like me very well, so I was the first to go as the season was winding down in mid October. After, I had quit Universal Tours in the warehouse and went to work full time for Sound Tracks.
Debbie Watson set up a few things for me to do at a couple of events she had in Malls using potable sound booths, but that was not enough to live on. So I called it quits and headed back to Redding. California. One person from the young women’s youth group offered to give me a ride with all my stuff back to Redding, California. If I paid for her gas and food on the trip up and back. I packed up my stuff and left North Hollywood and ended up back in Redding at the end of October 1988 just in time to get back to see my sister Cher Carter’s youngest son Brett be born.
In my storage I had at the time I had a boom box I gave it to my friend from the North Hollywood Baptist Church because she did not have a radio or cassette tape player in her mini truck. That way she would have something to help keep her awake for the 10-hour drive back to North Hollywood.
Over the years I always thought the first angel was the second one in San Francisco but the first one was in North Hollywood, then San Francisco and finally Hawaii and I have not seen her again since but that does not mean I will never see her or have it happen again, but now I know what she looks like. So she may not be able to do it again any more to help me, unless they send another angel, one in her place if I am ever in need as I was each of those three times.
God Bless all three angels who was just one angel I saw three different times in my life and Faith Rogers of the Kutras Gardens Senior Apartments an earthly angel, a friend of my Mom’s in Redding who helped me too, after my Mom passed away in Redding. Who helped me too after my Mom passed away with food and money, that I borrowed and I did pay her back. When I needed it the most and when I was at one of my lowest points in my life after my Mom passed away and went to heaven to see her Mom who has been waiting there for her with open arms, her Father John Donaldson, along with her brother Dick Donaldson who went there first and her favorite grandson David Scott; along with her first born child Sharon, who was born still born. Blessings to all of them in heaven as I look forward to seeing them soon there too when my time comes...
In Judaism an angel is a spiritual entity in the service of God. Angels play a prominent role in Jewish thought throughout the centuries, though the exact meaning of the word has been subject to widely, at times wildly, different interpretations.
A number of numinous creatures subordinate to God appear through the Hebrew Bible; the Malach (messenger/angel) is only one variety. Others, distinguished from angels proper, include Irinim (Watchers/High Angels), Cherubim (Mighty Ones), Sarim (Princes), Seraphim (Fiery Ones), Chayyot ([Holy] Creatures), and Ofanim (Wheels). Collective terms for the full array of numina serving God include: Tzeva, (Host), B'nei ha-Elohim or B'nai Elim (Sons of God), and Kedoshim (Holy Ones). They are constituted in an Adat El, a divine assembly (Ps. 82; Job 1). A select number of angels in the Bible (three to be precise) have names. They are Michael, Gabriel, and Satan.
Angels can come in a wondrous variety of forms, although the Bible often neglects to give any description at all (Judges 6:11-14; Zechariah 4). They appear humanoid in most Biblical accounts (Numbers 22) and as such are often indistinguishable from human beings (Gen. 18; 32:10-13; Joshua 5:13-15; Judges 13:1-5) but they also may manifest themselves as pillars of fire and cloud, or as a fire within a bush (Ex. 3). The Psalms characterize natural phenomenon, like lightning, as God's melachim (Ps. 104:4). Other divine creatures appear to be winged parts of God's throne (Is. 6) or of the divine chariot (Ezek. 1). The appearance of cherubim is well known enough to be artistically rendered on the Ark of the Covenant (Ex. 25). Perhaps the most ambiguous creature is the Malach Adonai, an angel that may or may not be a visible manifestation of God.
Biblical angels fulfill a variety of functions, including conveying information to mortals, shielding, rescuing, and caring for Israelites, and smiting Israel's enemies. The Book of Daniel includes a number of ideas about angels that would be elaborated upon in post-Biblical tests, including named angels and guardian angels, that all the nations of the world have their own angelic prince, that angels are arranged hierarchically, and that angels have delimited spheres of authority.
Angels by Rabbi Geoffrey W. Dennis
Born Again (Christianity)
In Christianity, born again refers to a spiritual and metaphorical rebirth, accepting Jesus as the Messiah and receiving the Holy Spirit. In the Bible, Jesus stated that only those who are born-again shall see Heaven: "Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again" (John 3:3).
An individual who has been "born again" is also referred to as saved. These terms are frequently used by Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Pentecostal, and some Mainline branches of Protestant Christianity. It is sometimes associated with non-denominational individuals, groups and churches. In modern Christianity, the act of baptism is often regarded as a physical representation of the process of being spiritually born again.
Outside of Christianity, the term "born again" is occasionally used to describe beliefs characterized by renewal, resurgence or return.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia at wikipedia.org
End of "Up from here" Chapter 20: Angels"
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