Looking back, everything worked out just fine, I think. Pursuing a woman overly concerned with appearances could not have brought long-term happiness to me, and there was little reason to hope that a love relationship with Masha would have worked. Masha was 10 years older than I was, which did help open me up to the possibility of dating older women (hello Sharon, my beautiful wife and love of my life, and, yes, an older woman!). Prior to this, it seemed only younger woman had even the remotest of interest in me. I always considered myself too immature for older women, anyway.
Laurie and my grandmother, Christmas 1988
I made a sincere effort to establish the “perfect” relationship with Laurie. Alas, my efforts were not to come to a long term fruition. We did enjoy each others’ company for several months, but I had to experience some real trauma and drama both early on in our relationship, and at the end of it. In the interests of practicing safe sex, Laurie insisted that I get an AIDS test, due to my past choices for drug use and sexual activity. At that time, an AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence, so it was pretty normal to have reservations about both the disease, and getting tested for it.
I went to the public health clinic, and submitted my blood sample for the test. It was handled in an anonymous fashion. so as to protect the individual who is tested, and keep their results secret. My health department contact was a friendly gay man, who tried his best to help me find peace around the whole process. Yet, in the three weeks it took to get my results back, I developed death terrors, and experienced anxiety unlike anything I had experienced before. It was so much easier for me when I held the gun to my own head, figuratively speaking, than when the potential for a fatal illness took over that role, and potentially removed my freedom of choice in how I should have to die.
My test came back OK, of course, so I was able to continue on my new path of life with Laurie, and share in the joy of a more liberated sexual expression. Yet, there was something amiss within Laurie. She was in the midst of a spiritual crisis, where she no longer believed in the power of her “God” to deliver her to her own promised land of fully expressed human potential. She was depressed, and she needed anti-depressants to sustain her. She made poor choices around maintaining her independence, and the direction that she was heading was to become a dependent bride, and, ultimately, a mother to several children.
The story bends back to my relationship with Masha for a moment. Masha called me about a year after I had last seen her, in November of 1988, to wish me a happy birthday. I was already sensing the potential end to my relationship with Laurie, and I told Masha about that (yes, Laurie was my “replacement for Masha”). She reported to me that she was now engaged to some Christian leaning dude who was quite a bit homelier than I was. (Oh, was that supposed to feel good to me?) She regretted not having released her prejudices earlier, so that we could have had a deeper relationship. She thanked me for teaching her the value of the spirit, versus those who over-valued money and appearance. It was a bittersweet revelation to me, and I never heard from her again.
My own heart could not support a person of deteriorating mental health, with the intention of becoming a home-bound mother. My spirit kept yelling at me that I needed either a strong, spiritually healing woman, or nobody at all. Coupled with this was the fact that I perceived that she still had sexual curiosity towards new men, as evidenced by her continued perusal of Willamette Week’s singles section. What ended the relationship was one evening her mother called me late, asking when she might expect Laurie to return home, since she saw Laurie leaving with me earlier in a new car. I had to tell Mrs. Hartmann that I was not with Laurie that evening. Both Mrs. Hartmann and I starting crying together when we realized that Laurie was secretly out with another man, “exploring her options”. The next day I met with her to end the relationship.
In 1987, I met Marie Schmidt, a practitioner of the Infinite Way, which is a movement involved with “spiritual healing” created by Joel Goldsmith (died 1964). She was a woman about 87 years old, who taught every Sunday at the old YWCA on 10th Avenue in downtown Portland. I had seen a simple advertisement for her tape group, while attending the International New Thought Alliance conference in Portland. The tape group was a combination mediation group, and a forum for listening to the taped teachings of Joel Goldsmith, a spiritual healer and mystic who first began his healing practice shortly after the Great Depression began.
She had been holding weekly meditations and tape recorded playbacks of Joel’s actual messages since 1962 (she had 1000 hours of his recorded messages, which she ended up giving to me). Marie would sit in the front of the room, and lead a 15 minute meditation, followed by the playing of a cassette tape of one hour length, which she had. She had a collection of at least 300 tapes (of which I eventually copied virtually all of them, and committed them to memory as best that I could).
I was captured by this group, which had mostly older people who attended. I believe that I was the youngest person there, for the period from 1987-1991, while I remain involved with her group. Initially, I kept my distance from most of the people, not really being sure what the whole business was about. I eventually drew Joan Madsen and Marcus Jones into the group, who I knew from the International New Thought Alliance convention of 1987, as well as Alcoholics Anonymous, and the Living Enrichment Center.
Late in 1988, In Marie’s apartment, Me, Joan Madsen, Marie, Marcus Jones, and Jeff, from left to right.
One day in February of 1989, after I had just broken off an engagement to be married to Laurie Hartmann, and I was devastated. The sweet old woman, Marie, offered me a “healing session”. Well, I had my doubts, and nothing to lose, and I was a little curious about this “healing business”. I went up to her apartment, still devastated, and meditated with her for 15 minutes. At the end, Marie spoke the “message” that she heard from Spirit, in regards to me.
“More perfect than you are, you could never be”,
with
“All that is human, is illusion”.
Well, OK, but how can I possibly apply that spiritual salve?
As I thanked her for her time, I then noticed I was totally at peace, and I was “healed” of all of my emotional disturbances around the ending of my engagement to Laurie. It was as if the winds of Spirit had blown away everything from my mind, except peace and joy.
As I look at my life’s history, I have been healed by its Mystery.
I later tried to have her heal my mentally sick ex-wife, Donelle, with no success. So there were limits to her ability, though she always stated that God heals, not herself . I can almost now hear Marie’s voice, telling me, in regards to all of us:
“More Perfect than you are, you could never be.”
How that manifests in all of our lives remains an unraveled mystery, to be experienced by us each day that we have the privilege to wake up. She would tell me that we are all blessed by each other’s continued walk through life. Love goes before us, to make all of “the crooked places straight”. We are Loved, and, in fact are Love Itself. The body goes where it must, but also, so does our Hearts. Go in Peace and Love, and always be willing to bring healing to any situation, for that is our mission, and who we are always to be.
In 1994, Marie was placed in the St. Andrews home near Mt. Tabor, when her nephew noted her deteriorating health, and he was concerned about her decline. Marie continued to practice healing with the other patients, even while under care of the attending professionals. My last visit to her, prior to her death, was characterized by her still restating to Sharon and me of our perfection in the eyes of God.
“More Perfect than you are, you could never be.”
—–Marie Schmidt
At lunch with Marie, Sharon, and I, around 1990
