posted October 05, 2007 08:37 PM         

By Frances Farmer, Age 16
West Seattle High School, Seattle, Washington
First Prize, Familiar Essay Division,
Scholastic Awards
Teacher: Miss Belle McKenzie
Year: 1929

"No one ever came to me and said, "You're a fool. There isn't such a thing as God. Somebody's been stuffing you." It wasn't murder. I think God just died of old age. And, when I realized that he wasn't any more, it didn't shock me. It seemed natural and right!

Maybe it was because I was never properly impressed with a religion. I went to Sunday School and liked the stories about Christ and the Christmas star. They were beautiful. They made you warm and happy to think about. But I didn't believe them. The Sunday School teacher talked too much in the way our grade school teacher used to when she told us about George Washington. Pleasant, pretty stories, but not true.

Religion was too vague. God was different. He was something real, something I could feel. But there were only certain times when I could feel it. I used to lie between cool, clean sheets at night after I'd had a bath, after I had washed my hair and scrubbed my knuckles and finger-nails and teeth. Then I could lie quite still in the dark with my face to the window with the trees in it, and talk to God. "I am clean, now. I've never been as clean. I'll never be cleaner." And somehow, it was God. I wasn't sure that it was ..... just something cool and dark and clean.

That wasn't religion, though. There was too much of the physical about it. I couldn't get that same feeling during the day, with my hands in dirty dish water and the hard sun showing up the dirtiness on the roof tops. And after a time, even at night, the feeling of God didn't last. I began to wonder what the minister meant when he said, "God, the father, sees even the smallest sparrow fall. He watches over all his children." That jumbled it all up for me. But I was sure of one thing. If God were a father, with children, that cleanliness I had been feeling wasn't God. So at night, when I went to bed, I would think, "I am clean. I am sleepy." And then I went to sleep. It didn't keep me from enjoying the cleaness any less. I just knew that God wasn't there. He was a man on a throne in Heaven, so he was easy to forget.

Sometimes I found he was useful to remember; especially when I lost things that were important. After slamming through the house, panicky and breathless from searching, I could stop in the middle of a room and shut my eyes. "Please God, let me find my red hat with the blue trimmings." It usually worked. God became a superfather that couldn't spank me. But if I wanted a thing badly enough, he arranged it.

That satisfied me until I began to figure that if God loved all his children equally, why did he bother about my red hat and let other people lose their fathers and mothers for always? I began to see that he didn't have much to do about hats or people dying or anything. They happened whether he wanted them to or not, and he stayed in Heaven and pretended not to notice. I wondered a little why God was such a useless thing. It seemed a waste of time to have him. After that he became less and less, until he was ..... nothingness.

I felt rather proud to think that I had found the truth myself, without help from anyone. It puzzled me that other people hadn't found out, too. God was gone. We were younger. We had reached past him. Why couldn't they see it? It still puzzles me."

posted October 05, 2007 09:03 PM         

THE JOURNEY, a poem by Frances Farmer

NORTH
“not that I speak in respect of want...”

If in Seattle then, the rain
Still mingles in the trees,
Mixed with the dank and dearly loved grey spume
Off Puget Sound.
Who will remember?
I feel the source but I long since
Have torn myself away,
Against the rock and rain of other shores
My roots are breaking.
Oh mother who so closely clung,
And fiercely fought the native years,
How can it be that only in defeat
You found your strength?
Retreat, retreat in peace and grieve,
The grey sky covers all, and still it rains
On Puget Sound
And still the tree lies shattered.

SOUTH
“but I have learned ...”

Along the rim of Hawks Nest Bay
A growth of trees drop shade,
The red ant swarms,
Green water hisses over the reef,
And I walk naked along the shore.
As smooth, as white as snow,
The sand stretched under the sun,
Black aching shoulders of rock rise in the silence.
Where is the island of peace,
The green hill with grasses?
Deep in the dangerous sea
The shark fin passes.

EAST
“In whatsoever state I am ...”

Now richly droops wisteria bloom,
While elegant bugs, on separate flourishing leaf,
Luxuriously maneuver.
If we are silent while we feel
How quiet is the night with jasmine,
How sweet the scent of rain upon the pepper tree,
If we but hold our breaths,
One second, while the wind is busy out to sea,
How sharp will seem the sting
Of slug and ant and snail attacking blossoms.

WEST
“therewith to be content ...”

posted October 05, 2007 09:03 PM         

Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle

It's so relieving
To know that you're leaving as soon as you get paid
It's so relaxing
To hear that you're asking wherever you get your way
It's so soothing
To know that you'll sue me, this is starting to sound the same

I miss the comfort in being sad
I miss the comfort in being sad
I miss the comfort in being sad

In her false witness, we hope you're still with us,
To see if they float or drown
Our favorite patient, a display of patience,
Disease-covered Puget Sound
She'll come back as fire, to burn all the liars,
And leave a blanket of ash on the ground

I miss the comfort in being sad
I miss the comfort in being sad
I miss the comfort in being sad

It's so relieving
To know that you're leaving as soon as you get paid
It's so relaxing
To know that you're asking wherever you get your way
It's so soothing
To know that you'll sue me, this is starting to sound the same

I miss the comfort in being sad
I miss the comfort in being sad
I miss the comfort in being sad

posted October 06, 2007 10:06 AM         

It's difficult to tell what she believed.

I think much of that essay was intended to be provocative,
and not to literally express her own views.

posted October 06, 2007 10:25 AM         

Male is Francis with an I and female is Frances with an E. Most people at work etc. call him Frank but I call him by his nickname, Butch. Avoids the E's and I's.

I like her poem, HSC. The thoughts in both her poem and her essay , I feel, are just a reflection of the struggle we all go through on our journies. The doubts, the questioning, it's all a part of developing our faith and forming our beliefs.

I have never not believed in God but I have always and still do question my concepts of God and any beliefs I hold.

Don't want to ever run the risk of pigeon holing a Being as vast and mysterious as God. It's weird that I don't place any expectations on God but I do on other people. Since I don't expect or take anything for granted concerning God I am never disappointed. Yet I am many times disappointed in other people.