This is interesting to me. Some friends and I have been talking about various cultural movements in the U.S. since the 1950’s and here I found this blog post on the Gothard movement this week:
http://thegospelcoalition.org/mobile/article/tgc/growing-up-gothard
Who else attended at least one of their weeklong seminars? I went to the one for Basic Youth Conflicts when I was around 15, with my older friend driving us downtown in Grand Rapids, Michigan each night.
I emerged unscathed (but I have a very hard head–not hard heart, just a hard head!!! LOL!).
What I actually remember the most was how we got *into* the Civic Auditorium. Gail had a place she always parked across the Grand River from the auditorium. Maybe her parents told her to do that . . . Gail also had cerebral palsy and walked with a great deal of movement to the side as well as forward.
That month, they were repairing the bridge across the river that was closest to the parking lot. Rather than walk two or three blocks out of our way, we and many other young people walked across a blocked bridge!!!
There was a spot where the entire bridge was blocked off except for a four-inch wide walkway that was about three feet long, getting around the barrier. Yup, you guessed it. We hung onto the rail as we walked that plank around the barrier, hanging out 50 feet above the river.
Every night for five nights. It was terrifying. And coming back after dark was worse. And Gail had cerebral palsy . . .
But we were all young and dumb and we went across in one big mass of oblivion.
No one fell into the river. Bwahaha!
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