INSIGHT MAGAZINE AND THE “NOW” GENERATION

Groovy and cool were the words of the day, and Do Your Own Thing was the mantra of the “Now” Generation, that is my generation of cool, groovy long-haired cats and chicks.  Guitars were always around, whether one played them or not, blue jeans were a sign of rebellion and not to be worn on religious campuses.  It was in this era, circa 1970, that the Seventh-Day Adventist church realized that it had to get hip if it was going to appeal to the youth culture. 

What did the Adventists have to appeal to flower children living in the moment, counting the petals on daisies, tripping out on cloud formations?  THE YOUTH INSTRUCTOR, the only Adventist magazine for teens at the time, had been started by none other than James White, husband of Ellen G. White of prophetic fame, before the Civil War.  1852, to be exact, not even ten years after The Great Disappointment when the Millerites had scheduled the Second Coming of Christ and been stood up, not once, but twice as William Miller recalculated all the signs and numbers. 

I remember THE YOUTH INSTRUCTOR.  In my time, they didn’t hand it out in Sabbath School because, perhaps, they knew it was boring to teens.  I remember my grandparents subscribing to it.  Mrs. White was still alive when they were children, so they were in tune with THE YOUTH INSTRUCTOR.   By 1970,  other Christian ministries were targeting my generation with psychedelic posters of a smiling Jesus in love beads.  The One Way arrow figured prominently (One Way To Christ).  Books such as JESUS THE REVOLUTIONARY were being published to show how hip Jesus was.  It was time for a cool,  groovy replacement of THE YOUTH INSTRUCTOR before our entire generation lost interest and split the scene, man.

            And so INSIGHT MAGAZINE was born, its covers featuring guitars and warped fonts in hallucinogenic colors.  This magazine was proudly handed out in Sabbath School, and I would surreptitiously read it from cover to cover during the church service that followed.  My ambition was to be a published writer, but I had no idea how to make that happen beyond writing stories, which I did with pen and paper, later on a Smith-Corona manual typewriter that was older than I was.  If I wanted a second copy of anything I wrote, I had to use smeary carbon paper and hope I didn’t make too many typos on the original.  Some writers claim they prefer a manual typewriter to computers.  In my opinion, that is seriously deranged.

            I was seventeen years old in 1973, one of an elite handful of students who had been chosen by Southern Missionary College to enroll in its Honors Composition Class.  I forget how they discovered me.  I was extremely withdrawn, traumatized by years of bullying and other personality-shriveling experiences.  I had never been on the Honor Roll in academy, and certainly didn’t graduate with honors, having focused instead on my notebooks filled with my handwritten fiction.  Apparently, rays of brilliance leaked out somewhere, somehow, in a detectable form, because I ended up in the honors class which was taught by the rather exotically-named Dr. Minon Hamm.   

            I still have the papers I wrote for that class.  Among them was “The Chase,” an action-adventure car chase story in which my father’s road rage ended up in a terrifying encounter with another driver who also had road rage.  In the story, I never identify my driver as my parent, and Dr. Hamm wrote a note on the margin that she found it intriguing that I never say who the driver is in relation to me.  Another story was “The Hearing,” in which a white child yearning for affection accuses a black teacher she admires of having slapped her.

            Dr. Hamm said that all of us could “write circles around her.”  She was a warm, enthusiastic teacher who loved mentoring us.  The most exciting feature of the class was that before we finished, we were required to submit one of our stories to INSIGHT MAGAZINE’s national writing contest.  If I’m not mistaken, it was their first writing contest ever.  If not the first, it was the second, for sure and certain.  At any rate, it was a new feature, this contest, and I was wildly excited (in my subdued, withdrawn way).  Dr. Hamm was submitting a story, also.    

            I submitted “The Shell.”  The story had happened the summer before, and I was, even then, struggling with the conflicts that would end with my leaving the church and rejecting all organized religion.  I wanted to believe, so I was in a wistful state of mind, when I wrote the story about an incident on the seashore involving the faith of my eight-year-old cousin.  She had found a shell, fallen in love with it, only for it to slip between her fingers.  The sun was setting, the wind was wild, and she was praying to Jesus to help her find the shell.  I didn’t think she would ever find that shell, and I was saddened that she might lose her faith at such an early age because I knew what a painful process that is.  The story was very short, only a few paragraphs long, describing the search on the beach, my inner conflict, and my shock when the little girl screamed with joy that she had found the lost shell.

            Now, the desired ending would be a reaffirmation of my own faith, but real life is more complex, or it has been for me.  Instead, I ended the story on a more haunting note: Then I hear another cry. It chills through my wet clothes to my heart. I hear the bleat of a lamb. Spinning around to face the roaring sea, I see the gull. It opens its beak and utters the bleat again, gliding and dipping to touch the water.

            The reader is left to draw an independent conclusion, one that I do not spell out except in my subtle reference to the bleating of lambs and the crying of gulls.     

            We in the composition class critiqued each other’s stories.  I think Dr. Hamm thought “The Shell” would win the contest.  Maybe she gave all the students the impression that she thought their story would win, and that was the mark of a true mentor.

            I don’t remember the other students’ stories, but I remember Dr. Hamm’s.  It was titled “Uccello.”  In the story, a group of students are spending a summer studying in Italy.  When they arrive, they find that they are staying two to a room and must choose roomates.  The narrator ends up rooming with an unpleasant girl named Robin. The story was beautifully written with bird motifs throughout, the birds on the rooftops of Italy, the tortured, birdlike soul of Robin, the Italian word for bird, uccello.  In the course of the summer the narrator and Robin build a rapport and as a result, Robin begins to open her heart to Jesus.

              I remember “Uccello” because it was well crafted, but I also remember it because Dr. Hamm was put in an uncomfortable position when she had to inform the class that “Uccello” had won the writing contest.  She apologized profusely.  I don’t think any of us held it against her because we knew that she had competed with us because she considered us worthy competitors.  Besides, it was clear to me why INSIGHT chose her story over mine.  Mine had a cool, hip teenage protagonist, but Dr. Hamm’s story had an exotic location and a tidy, religious conclusion.

            Several years later, I found my writing groove.  It was a new age, the hippies were a vanishing breed, quickly replaced by yuppies and the word groove was going the way of the vinyl record album.  I came back to the INSIGHT contest and won it several times.  There was a new editor at INSIGHT, so eventually I dug out “The Shell,” and what do you know?  They published it for the kids of the nineties. To use 1990s speak, Sweeeeet!