Life Story of Keith Green - Part 1 — Melody Green

Keith Green’s Spiritual Legacy and Search for Truth

Sparrow Press presents No Compromise, the life story of Keith Green.

Once upon a time, in a generation steeped in emptiness and spiritual darkness, a boy was born with a great gift. Trained as a musician, he had a unique ability, some would say genius, to put spiritual truth into the language of the common people of his time.

His biographical writings record the intensity of his struggles, his early odyssey into the pathways that promised so much but led nowhere. These records chronicle the search of a young man seemingly out of step with his age, who was not afraid to risk everything for what he had found to be real and right.

In his intensity, he questioned everything and everyone that appeared to hold the key to life. Once he found that answer, nothing could turn him from it, and he began a lifelong crusade to see his world likewise transformed.

No one who knew him would deny that he offended many. He especially shocked the religious establishment in his zeal to bring compassion, honesty and reality back to the church. He was blunt, he was funny, he could be tactless and even crude.

He steadfastly refused to accept the spiritual status quo, quietly mocking hypocrisy with laughter while bearing his own fears and struggles through tears. Many of his songs are simply sermons set to music, prophetic pieces in harmony that set standards for a generation.

He was cut off by some and almost canonized by others, but he was impossible to ignore. His life and work affected literally millions around the world. Gone from us now, he impacted his generation like a spiritual H-bomb, and the reverberations of his courage and commitment will be felt for generations to come.

Most people today know him by his music only. Not everyone can write a song that still will be sung five centuries after his death. We remember him today as the man who launched the Reformation, the musician with a hunger to know God and make him known by faith, the man called Martin Luther.

This, of course, is not his story, but in another century and another culture, it might have been. Keith loved Jesus. He did what he could in the few intense years I was privileged to know him. You will catch a glimpse of that love in this, his story.

He was my friend, and I miss him.

Keith’s Encounter With Spiritual Deception

It was after 2 a .m., but the streets of Hollywood were still awake with activity. Four drag queens swept by us, followed by a couple wearing disco outfits, all headed inside the Blah Blah Cafe for a late-night breakfast.

The Blah was just down Ventura Boulevard from the Queen Mary, and Keith's audience was always seasoned with gays and straights alike. Keith had been performing at the Blah, as it was affectionately called by its regulars, for almost a year.

It was a small showcase nightclub that spotlighted showbiz hopefuls and was frequented by talent scouts from big record companies. Keith was one of those hopefuls. Tonight, he'd given it his all one more time, and now we were leaving, still undiscovered.

On our way out, we spotted a figure looming towards us out of the dark. It was Harmony. Harmony looked like a gruff mountain man with his scraggly hair and beard. Here we were in 1974, but this guy was caught in a 60s time warp.

All he talked about was peace, love, and living off the land. Hey, how's it going? Keith called. Inevitably, most of our conversations drifted towards spiritual experiences these days. Recently, we'd been looking into Jesus Christ.

We weren't Christians. Church was a dead institution to us. But Jesus did seem to be a spiritual master of some sort, and we had a degree of respect for his life and teachings. Keith and Harmony immediately began talking about the supernatural.

It was a typical conversation for people who were into drugs and the mystical, which were a lot of the people we knew. I'd been reading about Jesus lately, Keith was saying. He was a pretty radical person.

Harmony's eyes brightened. Then slowly, a strange look came over his face. His eyes got misty and distant. Very calmly, he said, I am Jesus Christ. Keith reacted like he'd been stung by a scorpion. Without missing a beat, he shot back.

Beware of the false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, that inwardly are ravenous wolves. I recognized the quote as something Jesus had said. But what happened next was really hard to believe.

Harmony's eyes grew wide. Then they narrowed to slits. Furrows creased across his forehead, and his eyebrows knit together. A sneer came over his unusually mild face, and his upper lip curled back, exposing his yellow smoke-stained teeth.

Leaning toward Keith, his teeth bared. He let out a growl that started in his throat, like that of a wolf, and ended with a horrible hissing sound of a snake. It happened in only seconds. Then Harmony's face relaxed.

But his eyes looked confused, embarrassed. The hiss seemed to hang in the still night air. My skin was still tingling from the shock, and Keith had obviously been rocked by it, too. He looked from Harmony to me with wide eyes.

It was like someone or something took control of Harmony, using him for its own purposes. Then just as quickly, discarded him, leaving him in confused embarrassment. We quickly excused ourselves and left to drive home.

The weird experience with Harmony highlighted that there was indeed a very real spiritual realm. A realm full of power and possibly even danger. Had we heard a voice from that other side speaking through Harmony?

Or was it just the voice of the age? After all, a lot of people were saying, you are your own god. There's no right or wrong. But we wondered, is there a dark side and a light side to spiritual energy?

Keith and I had both been caught up in a search to find our spiritual identities. We were looking for truth, whatever it was. And our search had taken us both on many strange paths, from Buddhism to stuff like astral projection, and of course, drugs.

We were both convinced the truth was out there somewhere. And when we found it, it would fill an empty spot in our hearts and make our lives really worth living. Until then, every day held the potential of being the day of the great revelation.

At the time of our weird encounter with Harmony, however, we'd been slipping a bit and losing hope, even dabbling with drugs again, which we'd sworn off but kept falling back into. The following Wednesday, Keith last said at the Blah, ended at 1 a .m.

But we stayed until Albie, the owner, closed the doors three hours later. Albie took pride in running a successful club and rubbing shoulders with the almost elite of Hollywood's underside. He'd become a friend and a mentor to Keith, which is why his sudden ultimatum threw Keith for a loop.

Albie said, I'm sorry, Keith, but you've got two weeks to pack him in or I'll have to replace you with another act. You've got to draw more people. I've got a club to run, salaries to pay. I just can't afford to keep losing money on you.

Keith went home that night deeply depressed. Even the quaalude he took couldn't touch the real hurt, the whispers of failure. After Albie's ultimatum, Keith sprang into immediate action and spent all week phoning anyone and everyone he knew.

He almost begged them to come, telling them about his new songs and how he wanted to see them and how he was going to lose his job unless the place was packed. I felt embarrassed for him and even worse when he insisted I call my friends as well.

But we were in a real bind. Money was tight. We'd already sold my red Triumph sports car and my prized Martin D35 guitar, but the word for us in 1974 was survival. We walked into the Blah the following week at around 8 .30.

When packed, the Blah could hold about 65 people seated on chrome and vinyl chairs. Right now, those chairs were mostly empty. Keith and I sat silently in the back of the skinny little club, watching each other watch the door.

Married for only eight months, we made quite a pair. Me in my Indian print skirt and long straight hair, and Keith wearing blue jeans in a new flowered cowboy shirt, his freshly cut hair hanging well below his shoulders.

I loved the way Keith looked. His clear blue eyes and fair skin gave him a childlike air. And now that he'd shaved off his beard, the fact that he was just 20 years old was plain to see. Slowly, in twos and threes, people started arriving.

Chairs scraped against the cement floor, one cigarette after another was lit, and the noise level began to rise. Still, there weren't enough people, and we knew it. We've got a little more time, I said, trying to conceal my own fears.

There is no more time. This is it. Keith shoved back his chair with disappointment written all over him. Even though the odds were against him, I knew he'd give it his all. He made his way to the stage and started doodling on the battered upright piano.

But few people in the scant crowd paid any attention. He finally launched into Life Goes On, a song he'd written with his new friend, Randy Stonehill. He pounded the keys in a way that sent terror into the heart of every piano teacher.

I often held my breath hoping he wouldn't miss a note. But even when he did, it didn't matter. It wasn't perfection that drew you to Keith's music, or to him, for that matter. It was heart. A few more tables were filling up, and to my relief, some people were clapping along.

Still, I was paying more attention to the door than to Keith. He kicked into a Joni Mitchell song, Free Man in Paris, the story of a record company exec on vacation in Paris who was tired of cranking out hit artists, or, as the song went, stoking the Star Maker machinery behind the popular song.

Keith had become all too familiar with the Star Maker machinery. In particular, our whole life revolved around Keith's drive to make it big in the music business. He'd already pitched himself to every major label in town.

His fear of not succeeding was overshadowed only by the fear of getting involved with the wrong people. And there were some people whose help we didn't want. Like the guy last September who just bubbled over with I can make you a star noises.

But as Keith confided to his daily journal, there was, as usual, a string attached. And Keith said no to working with him. On stage, Keith continued with the next few songs, squinting through the glaring stage light, keeping a check on the crowd.

More people filtered in, some faithful friends, Keith's parents, our poker playing buddies, even a few industry friends. He finished to an enthusiastic round of applause. The place was packed. As he made his way over to the table, his usually springy steps were even springier.

Not only were we high on the moment, our friend Harriet had come bearing gifts. Keith lifted the lid of the shoebox and his eyes brightened. Brownies! Harriet smiled and said, my own special recipe, homegrown if you know what I mean.

You put grass in them, Keith said. The best. As the marijuana-laced brownies hit bottom, things began to look even more up. Keith was obviously soaring with the moment. Somehow, though, my thoughts were pulled to our future.

I just knew Keith was supposed to be up in front of a lot of people. He felt he had a message to offer the world, an important message from his spiritual search. But what? And even if Keith made it in music, would we make it as a couple?

We like to talk a lot about living in harmony with the universe, but we sure had our share of arguments. There were lots of contradictions in our lives. In areas like honesty and integrity, Keith had the highest standards.

We didn't cheat on our taxes, but sometimes we'd take illegal drugs. Was there a difference? It was hard to live with so many unanswered questions. It was as if something was tugging at us, pulling us into uncharted waters.

Something that would change our lives forever. In the days following our victory at the Blas, my mind wandered over the many strands that wove together inside this man I'd married. I thought about the sensitive inner man who was determined to find spiritual answers.

Yet there was another side of him, the little boy who always wanted to be in show business. That side explained so much about who Keith was now. I lost my gun to another guy now now he's a real dog. Keith was third generation show business.

His maternal grandfather was a successful composer, screenwriter, and a pioneer in the music industry. The same love of music was passed on to Keith's mother. Right out of high school, she started singing popular music with the big bands and she was offered a contract to sing with Benny Goodman, but turned it down to marry Keith's dad when he was still a handsome baseball rookie on the New York Giants farm team.

By the time he was nine months old, Keith could hum Rockabye Baby on perfect pitch. When he was three, he could sing harmony to his mom's alto and at five, he could play anything he heard on the ukulele.

He was seven when his parents bought him his first piano and he made his first television commercial the same year. By now, he was also writing songs. When he played at Hoot Night at the Troubadour Nightclub in Hollywood, the audience gave him a standing ovation.

In 1962, when Keith was eight years old, he made his live theater debut as a little street urchin in Arthur Laurent's romantic comedy, The Time of the Cuckoo. Two years later, Keith moved on to legitimate theater, playing Kurt Von Trapp opposite Janet Blair's Maria in The Sound of Music.

In January 1965, upon the release of Keith's first 45 single, Cheese and Crackers, Teen Scene Magazine called Keith the youngest new face on the Hollywood scene. Keith's dad started to represent him as an artist and things began to take off.

One executive at Capitol Records wanted to sign Keith to a recording contract, but his superiors felt Keith was too young. No one as young as Keith, including the Osmonds or the Jackson 5, was even recording yet.

His dad moved on to Decca Records, where Keith was signed to a five-year contract. At the age of 11, Keith published his first song, The Way I Used to Be, and became the youngest member of ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers.

After an appearance on a local morning television show, Keith and his dad returned home to find a message waiting for them from none other than Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis Presley's long-time manager. Colonel Parker told them, if I wasn't tied up full-time with Elvis, I'd take Keith on, but you call me if you ever need any help.

Keith must have read with growing excitement as Time Magazine reported, Decca Records has a pre-pubescent dreamboat named Keith Green. He has already written 50 rock and roll songs, which he croons in a voice trembling with conviction.

Keith and his family just knew his career was about to take off. Like a rocket on a launching pad, all systems were go. But then, although Keith's record release from Decca made the top 10 in Hawaii, the major national breakthrough didn't materialize.

A short time later, Donny Osmond came on the scene capturing the pre-teen and teenage listeners that Decca had envisioned for Keith. His dreams came crashing down. Success had somehow passed him by. Married on Christmas Day in 1973, we were three months away from celebrating our first anniversary.

From Music Ambition to a Crisis of Faith

I found it hard to believe I was actually married and living in the suburbs with a backyard full of fruit trees. We had plenty of time and space to write music, but for Keith, it seemed like there was no time.

He was always in motion, always searching. It didn't make it any easier that the promise of a record deal always lingered out there. We were constantly running all over town to meet with someone in the business.

Keith would go to see CBS publishers often. He always brought our dog, Libra, up the elevator and right into the executive offices. In spite of the clumps of hair Libra left on their shag carpeting, CBS really liked Keith's music.

So much, in fact, that they offered him a position as a staff writer at $250 a week. It was a great deal. Besides the money, there were no office hours. He just needed to give them 18 acceptable songs in 12 months.

Since we were starting to write songs together, if CBS only signed him, they wouldn't own any of my share. This would benefit us financially and would have been 100 ethical. But Keith didn't want to be tempted by money.

He said, I'd rather make less money and have a clear conscience. I don't want to struggle trying to figure out my motives every time we write together. I'm not going to ask them to pay you anything. I only want your name added to the contract.

So CBS got two writers for the price of one. But as much as Keith was caught up in the world of music, there was still another part of him caught up in what seemed to be a lifelong spiritual search. Spiritual roots ran deep in Keith's family.

His grandfather had been a Christian scientist for 60 years. Keith's mom was raised in Christian science and when Keith's parents married, his dad followed suit. Keith was raised in a good moral atmosphere and he was basically a good kid.

Maybe it was a disappointment of having his dream with Decca vanish into thin air. Or maybe it was just sucked into the 1960s revolutionary spirit of Southern California. But Keith grew dissatisfied with himself and the life he was living.

By the time he was 15, he was growing more and more restless, argumentative, and less tolerant. The California scene was promising something more to life than Keith was experiencing at home and he wasted no time pursuing it.

In July of 1969, Keith withdrew his savings and financed a getaway with two older friends. He started keeping a record of his thoughts and activities in a journal that would become his lifelong friend.

The great runaway lasted four days. On that trip, Keith had his first taste of manual labor, which he hated, and a taste of life on the road, which he loved. In the next few years, Keith would run away from home two more times.

Once he was thrown in jail as a runaway and having no writing paper, scratched new song lyrics onto the cell wall with the heel of his shoe. Everywhere Keith looked, people were basically saying, forget the system.

Women had burned their bras and men had burned their draft cards. Someone even burned an American flag. Nothing was sacred. It seemed like seekers everywhere were united in a common theology that dressed itself in bare feet, Indian beads, incense, and Eastern music.

His search led him to Box Canyon, a desolate place in the mountains on the fringe of Los Angeles County. A popular place to film westerns, it had gained notoriety as the hideout of the infamous Charles Manson and his hippie family.

Keith started doing concerts in Box Canyon at a place called the Fountain of the World, a mansion-like building resembling a small medieval monastery. Over the main entrance was a sign that said, he who enters here walks on holy ground.

It was at the Fountain of the World that Keith's questions about life began to pile up on each other. Why couldn't everyone live in harmony? Where was the love and the unity? It seemed like everyone had given up on high ideals and instead were looking through the fragmented prism of windowpane LSD.

Keith's friends were finding their answers over the radio and in the rosy glow of the hash pipe. And Keith's own life had its share of contradictions. He had become a vegetarian to purify his body and then rationalized using peyote and other drugs to trigger his spiritual experiences.

And on top of that, he teased his friends about taking vitamins to enhance their health. While Keith was learning a lot about himself and life, being on his own had its ups and downs. He was ecstatic about receiving a three-minute standing ovation after a concert at a coffee house, but was forced to buy boots from the Salvation Army because his shoes had holes in them.

He didn't have a car and didn't know where he was going to sleep from one night to the next. At the beginning of December, Keith went to a Sunday morning Christian Science Church service. It underscored what he surmised from his own studies, that there's no literal hell and that only certain parts of the Bible are the inspired word of God.

Afterward, he somehow ended up at a Christian coffee house. The evening exploded into a heated debate. Keith was irritated by being confronted by the fundamental Christian belief that although God created us, a redemptive process was needed to enter a relationship with the Creator.

That thought was new to Keith and he didn't like it. Keith believed if he could only have perfect thoughts, he would experience God's perfection in body, mind, and spirit. The other thing that bothered him was the belief that the whole Bible was the inspired word of God.

Everyone knew it was written by men and men make mistakes. Anyway, if God was a loving Father, full of mercy and peace, how could he punish any of his children? These Jesus freaks, as Keith called them, had challenged his thinking that failed to convince him.

In his journal, he wrote, went to a Jesus freak coffee house and they tried to lay a trip on me about believing the whole Bible, word for word, even the part that says God kills my brother and I just don't believe that, not my wonderful Father.

I'm still trusting my brother Jesus Christ and Father God who are one together and one with me and we're one with everyone. But it's easier to say that the universe and everything in it is one. Peace through unity.

In the summer of 1972, Keith drove all the way to Colorado to participate in an event called the New World Family Gathering that was supposed to usher in the new age. But there was no sense of family at this family gathering.

Instead, he found a mindless prolonged party with people high on everything imaginable. It was not the spiritual event Keith had hoped for. When he returned to California, he had one more thing to scratch off his list of potential truths.

Over the past several months, he'd been on a reading marathon examining the works of Hess, Young, Heinlein, Castaneda, Gibran, Baba Ramdas, and the Bible. Interesting food for thought, but nothing was totally satisfying.

And then, a startling event shook Keith at a deep level. His 19th birthday was near the end of October and he planned a special celebration. One final mescaline trip with a close friend, Bill, a record company executive.

Keith, who had been trying to quit drugs, felt this trip would be his very last. As they sat in Bill's car on a high cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Bill told him that he'd made an appointment that night to meet with people from another planet.

It sounded crazy, but after three hits of mescaline, anything could be true. Come off it, Keith said. Don't mess with me. It's true, said Bill. They're meeting us in a few minutes and they want to take you back with them and their spacecraft.

They talked back and forth like that for some time and Keith started to panic. What if it was true? He'd read about people who'd met aliens. His heart was pounding so hard, it felt like it might burst from his chest.

The negative energy was real and very frightening. Dark forces were reaching for him, pushing him close to the edge of a black and empty place. He fought to keep from falling in. When the trip was over, Keith did some heavy soul searching.

He had a very strong sense that the eastern mystical occult paths he'd been walking might be leading him in the wrong direction. The spiritual darkness he'd felt that night was an unfriendly presence that he never wanted to experience again.

But he was still uncertain about where to turn. There did seem to be a common thread running through all the teachings Keith had studied. The person of Jesus Christ. Everybody seemed to say that at the very least, Jesus was a good guy.

Some said he was the son of God. Others said he was a prophet. Others said he was an ascended spiritual master. Even Buddha thought Jesus was okay. Everyone said something different, but it was all positive.

And to top it off, Jesus even said good things about himself. He said he was the only way to God. Keith had been running scared since his birthday mescaline trip. He doubted everything and everybody. Jesus seemed like a safe bet.

So Keith decided to deal with Jesus directly, not through any man or any organization. He wouldn't call himself a Christian because he didn't want to be one. He thought Christians were rejects, losers.

Besides, it seemed that in order to be one, you needed to have a barber in the family and sleep in a suit and tie. Keith was not ready for that. But he was ready to deal with Jesus one-on-one. And that's exactly what he did.

He opened his heart to Jesus without knowing who he was or what it might lead to. He only knew he had a deep need. In December 1972, he wrote in his journal, Jesus, you are hereby officially welcomed into me.

Now only action will reveal your effect on me. Keith was doing all he knew how to do trying to get closer to God. Still, he was groping. God is a concept, he wrote. Everything is getting numb. I'm so numb.

I need to feel again. I'm almost dead. Perhaps to show God that he really meant business, Keith decided he wanted to start wearing a cross. He went into a little second-hand shop where a small silver cross caught his eye.

It's over 150 years old, the shopkeeper told him, worn by a monk in an Ecuadorian monastery. Keith could barely see a faint raised outline of Jesus. The monk had rubbed it every time he prayed. And it was rubbed almost flat at the top.

The cross had a certain mystique to it, a sense of spiritual history. Someone who really loved Jesus had worn it. Keith hoped that same intensity of devotion might rub off on him. He had $14 of poker winnings in his pocket from the night before, and he paid the man and left the store with a determination to make an even deeper commitment.

It seemed everyone had some guru or spiritual teacher they were following. Keith decided he would be comfortable making Jesus his spiritual master and slipped the cross around his neck. As he drove, he found himself praying to a God he didn't know.

It wasn't a tidy little religious prayer. Like the cross, it was rough and uneven, a prayer of desperation. He had reached the bottom of his list. If Jesus didn't come through, he didn't know what he would do.

Tears gathered and spilled down his cheeks. In between broken sobs, he choked out a prayer. Oh, Jesus, Jesus, if you're real, if you are who you say you are, please prove it to me. I need you. I need something.

Show me the way. Prove that you're real and I'll serve you forever. End of part one. It was December of 1974. Our first anniversary was coming up on Christmas Day and I wanted to do something special for Keith.

Marriage, Conscience, and the Search for Biblical Faith

When I first met Keith in early 1973, he was just beginning to pray to this man, Jesus. He had told me, Jesus is my master. Keith was wearing this antique cross around his neck. Not exactly a bold statement of faith, more like holding up a candle of hope against the darkness.

Since Christmas was supposed to celebrate Jesus's birthday and since apart from music, trying to decide who Jesus was was all Keith talked about, a Bible seemed like a perfect surprise. The only Bible I ever owned was a Gideon Bible I took from a hotel room once.

I never bought one. There was a Christian bookstore next to a vegetarian restaurant Keith and I liked. With the clerk's patient help, I picked out a small leather King James edition, took it home, wrapped the box and hid it.

On Christmas Eve, I waited for the right moment to give Keith his Bible. But first, we had some packing to do for a trip to Canada the next night. Within minutes, the peaceful atmosphere changed and we were having one of our all too familiar disagreements.

Keith said something I didn't like. I shot something back. He picked up a shirt I was packing for him and threw it at me. I saw red. I got so angry, I grabbed a pair of scissors and threw them all the way across the room.

We kept arguing and I got so angry that without thinking, I pulled off my wedding ring and threw it straight at Keith. He just stared. I felt terrible. Some way to celebrate our first wedding anniversary.

Afterward, we were both really sorry and embarrassed. Late that evening, I brought out the gift box I'd been hiding and gave it to Keith expectantly. He unwrapped the box and opened the Bible. His eyes were shining with happiness.

We sat there together on the floor because Keith wanted to read to me out loud from the new Bible. I found myself wondering why two people who loved each other and wanted to live good lives just couldn't seem to do it.

Keith could get me so upset. He sparked those feelings in a lot of people. You either loved him or got mad at him. Sometimes both. There weren't many grays in Keith's world. There was black or white, good or bad.

And even though Keith could drive me to the brink, there was something about being with him that made me face tough questions about myself. Made me comb back through my life and try to figure out what I believed and why.

He seemed to have a compass while I was unsure of my direction. Unlike Keith's close-knit family, which was always pulling together to help him build his career, whenever I thought of my family, I was left with a kind of hollow feeling.

It was Keith's influence on me after a difficult and painful past that was pushing me further away from the dangerous places where I'd been wandering. Have you noticed lately that your soul has been getting out of your control?

Your emotions, your thoughts, your will. Don't you wish you could control your will and you could do whatever God tells you? Don't you wish you could control your mind.

And think the thoughts that are pleasing to God? Don't you wish that your emotions would be under the control of the Spirit? You'd be a happy person, wouldn't you, if your will and your emotions and your thoughts were under the control of the Spirit?

In perseverance, you will possess your souls. The day I met Keith Green,.

The last thing I wanted was a serious relationship. Near the end of January 1973, Keith showed up at Matrix Image, the videotape production company where I worked in the San Fernando Valley. His dad and his grandfather were with him.

They were looking into the possibility of combining Keith's music with some of the new video effects we were producing. As I gave them the tour, Keith stayed right on my heels, telling me more about himself than I really cared to know.

Then about a week later, he called me at work and asked if I would like to meet him for lunch. I stalled him, but Keith was cheerfully persistent. I was a bit surprised at myself for saying I would go.

I changed my mind several times before lunchtime arrived, but I met him as planned. He'd made sandwiches and we went to Chatsworth Park for a picnic. He brought along his guitar and as we sat on the grass, he played me a song he'd just finished.

As he sang, he voiced some of the same questions I'd been struggling with, like, is death the answer or just a door? I'd never heard anyone anywhere like Keith Green. But it wasn't just his music. It was all of him, the energy and sincerity, the sheer power of his performance.

About three weeks later, during another lunchtime get-together, Keith walked me to my car as I got ready to head back to work. We stood there for a moment. My car door was open and I was just about to get in when he stepped closer and kissed me.

I didn't resist. I liked the way he kissed and I kissed him back. On Easter Sunday, Keith was to pick me up to go to the Renaissance Fair in Ventura County. I'd warned him I wanted to take things slowly.

But when Easter arrived, so did Keith, hours before the time we had agreed on. His early knock woke me up and I stumbled to the door in a daze. I was so excited, I just couldn't wait any longer, he said sheepishly.

I sighed and let him in while I went off to get ready. I mean, what girl in her right mind could stay mad after an explanation like that? At the fair, Keith and I walked around for hours, buying organic food and looking at everyone in their medieval outfits.

There were minstrels, jugglers, palm readers, and artisans selling every kind of homemade item you could think of. The smell of incense and food mingled in a pleasant way and you could smell the perfumed oils, strawberry, sandalwood, and patchouli floating on the breeze.

We sat on the grass in the warm sun and talked all afternoon. There was something about Keith that was different from anyone I'd ever known. He was a true seeker, a deep thinker, and even though he was quite serious about life, he had a wild sense of humor that I really enjoyed.

The difference in our ages bothered me a bit, but at least his life experience and perspective on things helped close the seven-and-a-half-year gap between us. He was young and full of potential and hoped for the future, but said he often felt old and senile at 19.

And at just 26, I knew what he meant. Within a month, in May of 1974,.

Keith had moved into my apartment. This is powerful, don't you understand? There's thousands of us here that love Jesus, and we've got to love one another and create that power of love that he gives us in the spirit.

He wants us to find where can we hear more about Jesus? When can we worship him more? When, how can we lift him higher? Not becoming just another loving flower-powered generation of Jesus freaks. He wants us to be real, and he wants us to be shining lights of him.

Because the word Christian means.

Little Christ. We're supposed to be little Jesuses running around. One really beautiful spring morning, Keith convinced me I should play hooky from work. He wanted to take a long drive, so he picked the route, the back roads of Simi Valley that led up the coast to Santa Barbara.

On our way, we came upon a little antique store and stopped. Inside, Keith spotted a large silver cross with a turquoise stone in the center. Look at this great cross now. Let's get it for you. I felt awkward.