Not a Hippie
Hippie: (especially in the 1960s) a person of unconventional appearance, typically having long hair and wearing beads, associated with a subculture involving a rejection of conventional values and the taking of hallucinogenic drugs. Synonyms: flower child, Bohemian, beatnik, free spirit, nonconformist
I was never a hippie. For the most part, my friends and classmates were not hippies, either. I suppose we were a little too young, and a lot too sheltered, growing up in Fairbury, Nebraska, in the sixties and seventies. We knew a few people--very few--who were rumored to use LSD and other hallucinogens, and a few more who smoked marijuana. However, the drug of choice for teenagers in our part of the world was, and still is, alcohol. And I didn't drink.
Plenty of my classmates did, for sure, but that didn't make them "hippies." Neither did the bell-bottom jeans we all wore, or the mini- and maxi-dresses the girls wore, or our beads and granny glasses, or the girls' long straight hair, or even the boys' uncut hair.
By the late sixties and early seventies, even our moms were wearing their skirts well above the knee and, after a while, bell-bottom jeans were about the only kind you could buy. We may have looked a little bit like hippies, and we sure liked to listen to some good, hippie music, but we were not hippies.
Instead, we clung to our traditional values. We went to church nearly every Sunday. We stayed in high school until we graduated. Pregnant teens married their high school sweethearts in a hurry, or gave up their babies for adoption. The boys who liked to live life on the wild side often joined a branch of the military, right out of high school, so they would get "straightened out." We may have looked like hippies, and some of our aging relatives may have called us hippies because of our clothes and hair, but our values weren't much different from theirs.
Yes, I was a part of the Jesus movement that sprung up out of the hippie movement of the sixties and seventies. Some of my friends embraced the term, "Jesus Freak," when they were describing themselves, but I never liked that phrase. Whatever we called ourselves, though, we were united in our resolve to follow Christ. We gathered regularly for Bible study, and for prayer and praise. We attended church every Sunday. Sometimes, we attended each others' churches together. In Fairbury, some of us gathered together at the local Christian coffeehouse, the Anchor. We even traveled to other communities to gather with other young Christians. We were driven to learn as much as we could from the Bible, and to grow in our faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
And we joined together to sing new Christian music, sometimes accompanied by almost as many guitars as there were people. Everyone knew the most popular contemporary Christian songs: They'll Know We are Christians by Our Love, and Pass It On. But there were plenty of other songs that we learned and loved to sing.
In our response to the hippie culture of the day, the Jesus movement said things like "Who needs drugs? We have Jesus!" And many former hippies threw out their drugs and abandoned their chaotic lifestyles when they came to know Jesus. I knew two or three people, even in Fairbury, whose lives were drastically changed because of Jesus.
Flapper: (in the 1920s) a fashionable young woman intent on enjoying herself and flouting conventional standards of behavior and dress.
Years ago, I asked my Grandma Vawser, who came of age at another pivotal time in history, if she had been a flapper. I remember that she thought for a minute or two before she responded, "I guess I was!" In the rare photos I've seen of her from the Roaring Twenties, her hair was bobbed and she was wearing a short skirt. I know that she was a bit rebellious for a while, defying the conventional behavior that her parents expected.
If Grandma had grown up in the sixties, I suspect that she would have embraced the hippie lifestyle, at least for a short time. But I'm also quite certain that she would have given it all up to become a Jesus person. Her Christian example is still evident in the lives of many of her children and grandchildren. She would be pleased.
I was never a hippie. For the most part, my friends and classmates were not hippies, either. I suppose we were a little too young, and a lot too sheltered, growing up in Fairbury, Nebraska, in the sixties and seventies. We knew a few people--very few--who were rumored to use LSD and other hallucinogens, and a few more who smoked marijuana. However, the drug of choice for teenagers in our part of the world was, and still is, alcohol. And I didn't drink.
Plenty of my classmates did, for sure, but that didn't make them "hippies." Neither did the bell-bottom jeans we all wore, or the mini- and maxi-dresses the girls wore, or our beads and granny glasses, or the girls' long straight hair, or even the boys' uncut hair.
By the late sixties and early seventies, even our moms were wearing their skirts well above the knee and, after a while, bell-bottom jeans were about the only kind you could buy. We may have looked a little bit like hippies, and we sure liked to listen to some good, hippie music, but we were not hippies.
Instead, we clung to our traditional values. We went to church nearly every Sunday. We stayed in high school until we graduated. Pregnant teens married their high school sweethearts in a hurry, or gave up their babies for adoption. The boys who liked to live life on the wild side often joined a branch of the military, right out of high school, so they would get "straightened out." We may have looked like hippies, and some of our aging relatives may have called us hippies because of our clothes and hair, but our values weren't much different from theirs.
Jesus Freak: a term arising from the late 1960s and early 1970s counterculture; it is a rather insulting name for those involved in the Jesus movement. Synonyms: Jesus person, Christ-follower, born-again Christian, evangelical
Yes, I was a part of the Jesus movement that sprung up out of the hippie movement of the sixties and seventies. Some of my friends embraced the term, "Jesus Freak," when they were describing themselves, but I never liked that phrase. Whatever we called ourselves, though, we were united in our resolve to follow Christ. We gathered regularly for Bible study, and for prayer and praise. We attended church every Sunday. Sometimes, we attended each others' churches together. In Fairbury, some of us gathered together at the local Christian coffeehouse, the Anchor. We even traveled to other communities to gather with other young Christians. We were driven to learn as much as we could from the Bible, and to grow in our faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
And we joined together to sing new Christian music, sometimes accompanied by almost as many guitars as there were people. Everyone knew the most popular contemporary Christian songs: They'll Know We are Christians by Our Love, and Pass It On. But there were plenty of other songs that we learned and loved to sing.
In our response to the hippie culture of the day, the Jesus movement said things like "Who needs drugs? We have Jesus!" And many former hippies threw out their drugs and abandoned their chaotic lifestyles when they came to know Jesus. I knew two or three people, even in Fairbury, whose lives were drastically changed because of Jesus.
Flapper: (in the 1920s) a fashionable young woman intent on enjoying herself and flouting conventional standards of behavior and dress.
Years ago, I asked my Grandma Vawser, who came of age at another pivotal time in history, if she had been a flapper. I remember that she thought for a minute or two before she responded, "I guess I was!" In the rare photos I've seen of her from the Roaring Twenties, her hair was bobbed and she was wearing a short skirt. I know that she was a bit rebellious for a while, defying the conventional behavior that her parents expected.
If Grandma had grown up in the sixties, I suspect that she would have embraced the hippie lifestyle, at least for a short time. But I'm also quite certain that she would have given it all up to become a Jesus person. Her Christian example is still evident in the lives of many of her children and grandchildren. She would be pleased.
I had hippie flowers on my bedroom wall, but that was because I like flowers! I was not a hippie either.
ReplyDeleteI think we all pulled out the slogans we liked, and listened to the changing music, and wore the fashions that were popular, but there were really very few hippies in Nebraska!
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