G-d helping me . . . .

G-d helping me, my inner southern belle needs to make herself more evident in my attitudes, thoughts, and actions.

I remember the attitudes of certain women I met in the South and in those who were from the South, and I really admire a lot of them. (Certainly, I met some whose attitudes and actions were certainly NOT admirable, but these are not what this is about.)

Now, I am definitelty a Westerner and a Yankee, but I am 36% southern Belle. I know this for sure: I took the test! You can take it, too -- right here!
I didn't score quite as I expected on the next test -- I got "21% Dixie. You are a dandy Yankee Doodle." That test is here.
(You might want to check this out as well.)

But this is about the word gracious.

I recognize that some of the southern ladies I have met smiled sweetly and called people "honey," but as soon (or almost as soon!) as they were out of earshot, they had some biting things to say about those people. I am also aware that some southern ladies had a special way of talking to some people that would make them think they were being complimented -- until 15 minutes later, at which time they would suddenly comprehend that they had been solidly put down, lower than a worms' belly, by a woman with the sweetest smile on earth!

But there were also Southern Ladies who were an actual study in genteelity of the most unaffected kind. They were gracious. They were noble. They came across as cultured and kind, thus the capital S and the capital L on Southern Ladies here.

Such manners were not what I learned in my first fifty years. Let me change that -- in my first 55 years. I have been (as I have mentioned before) rough-and-tumble, loving the say-what-you-mean-and-mean-what-you-say attitude, holding no courtliness -- and-proud-of-it. Daring and once wild, I embraced and coddled what I see as my semi-hippy-like demeanor, holding it boldly in the face of anyone who was put off by it.

But I started a journey some 5 years ago that took me in a different direction.

For one thing, I was raised to be a Bible-thumper, and I am a Bible-thumper. But I simply did not realize what the Bible actually says! I read it through the dark, dark glasses of what I was, rather than reading it for what it says. Furthermore, certain people who were very influential to me reinforced this with meanness and vitriol that I swallowed and lived.

But having been away from such folk, gathering information from a different set of people, I began to see something different -- a different way to live. Only then did I see what the Bible had said all along: Be nice! Be nice! Be nice! It's in the Torah. It's in the Psalms. It's in the books of the prophets. It's in the books by the apostles.

So I began to take on those ways.

Then I met a certain young southern lady who told me, "That's your inner southern belle coming through!"

She was teasing, of course, but I began to consider that those very special southern ladies were like and decided that I could take that description on as well as declaring that I am simply learning what the Bible is actually saying about how I must conduct my life.

So fine! I am better off now for seeing how the Bible says I ought to act and trying to follow it, but I am also learning from the southern ladies -- the real Southern Ladies -- regarding how I can carry out biblical principles. I am sure the L-rd won't mind!