Home for my adult son is the mile-high city of Denver. It is where a cloudless azure sky envelops the snowcapped Rockies, which sparkle in bright sunlight. Every visit, I am never sure if it is the altitude or the beauty which takes my breath away.
During one long Easter weekend, we traveled to Boulder, home to the University of Colorado. We strolled the brick mall streets downtown where tulips and manicured perfection replaced cars. Street performers filled the air with vibrations from guitars, fiddles, and folk songs.
It was a lively scene dominated by young folks sporting a bit of a hippie vibe. Boulder had changed little from the university town it was in the late 1960s, although it had better restaurants and shops. And instead of barefooted, long-haired 60’s hippies, the people I saw on that visit wore sneakers and hair in all colors. Groovy!
The hippies I once knew spread flowers and peace. Some protested, experimented with drugs, and listened to rock music splashed with defiance. Our parents’ generation was labeled the “establishment,” and they often believed the world would eventually be doomed by these errant Baby Boomers.
“Their music is horrific; they are all druggies and are not true Americans!” The establishment shouted as the chants of the hippies rose to drown out adverse reactions to their culture.
Most generations believe the next generation will never be as accomplished as they are, and they declare America is going “down the tubes.” They believe the country is destined to fail because of the bad behavior of irresponsible, crazy kids.
Anybody remember our parents not allowing the boys to wear long hair? Anyone recall the moms and dads condemning the gyrations of Elvis or the mania the Beatles produced?
Well, I wore bell bottoms, owned Elvis albums, and who among Baby Boomer readers didn’t watch the Beatles on Ed Sullivan?
But our parents were wrong. We grew up and became productive citizens. The long-haired hippie boy of the ’60s is now CEO of some company somewhere, and the flower-child girl at Woodstock is now a grandmother, retired from the company she founded in the ’70s.
On Easter Sunday, that weekend we were in Colorado visiting my son, we walked into the Highlands United Methodist Church in Denver, a noble old church, which had seen multiple generations pass through its doors since 1926. The air was crisp, the sky brightly blue, and frankly, it closely resembled a time forty years earlier when my little boy wore a seersucker suit and carried his Easter basket to church.
Since church attendance had been declining and younger folks had not been participating as much in services across our land, and since I was no longer in the Bible Belt, I wondered what I would see that Easter day.
We took our seats in old wooden pews, where I noticed, mixed between the Bibles and Methodist hymnals, were children’s storybooks. I thought it was a bit odd, but after a few moments, I understood.
Many children, escorted by parents, noisily ran toward their seats. Toddlers were dressed in Easter colors of blue, pink, yellow, and purple. Siblings with disheveled hair and infants cradled in their parents’ arms filled every seat in the church.
Finally, the sanctuary was alive with songs, babies crying, children jabbering, and happiness. The 1960s hippie had become the grandparent. He sat beside the 1980s college student who had become the parent who sat beside the child who was reading the book he’d pulled from the back of the pew.
The young minister, wearing a peach-colored Easter blazer, enthusiastically stood to welcome all. After old Easter hymns were sung, he delivered a rip-roaring, happy sermon filled with God’s word and celebration for the risen Lord.
The world isn’t doomed because young folks listen to rap music instead of the Beatles or Guns N’ Roses. America isn’t lost because a newbie hippie is dressed in ragged khakis with purple hair and rings in his nose.
I found hope and solace in witnessing the return of young families to worship the Lord. One generation will pass on the word of God to the next. As I studied the congregation, I was pretty sure the grandmother in front of me once wore a flower in her hair, and the toddler’s father once followed the Grateful Dead.
No, the world isn’t doomed if we continue to pass our faith forward so the five-year-old boy in the seersucker suit may one day return to find hope in a church under a blue Colorado sky.
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Lynn Walker Gendusa is an author and columnist whose work appears regularly on NowHabersham.com and in USA Today newspapers. Her latest book is “Southern Comfort: Stories of Family, Friendship, Fiery Trials, and Faith.” She can be reached at www.lynngendusa.com. To enjoy more of Lynn’s inspirational work about faith, home, family, life, and love, click here.
