Messages spoken at the Texas Hill Country Camps Farthest Out
Texas Hill Country CFO:
20 messages from 2 gatherings, 1958 to 1959.
Campers first gathered in February 1952 as the Texas Valley CFO at Valley Christian Camp, four miles south of San Benito in the Rio Grande Valley. In 1958 they moved to the Mo Ranch Assembly Grounds at Hunt and took the name Texas Hill Country, meeting at Hunt through the 1960s and at Mo Ranch again from 1969 until 1982. The Hill Country Council Ring also sponsored weekend retreats in New Mexico.
The recordings, from 1958 and 1959, include Starr Daily, Gertrude Dekock Keehn, Genevieve Parkhurst and Glenn Harding.
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The fear beneath every fear, Starr Daily says, is the fear of not being loved, and faith alone will not cast it out. This talk to the 1958 Texas Hill Country CFO recalls a South Carolina household frozen in silent blame after a boy died. It also recalls the cellmate who told him to love the jailer who locked him in nightly or get out of the business.
The Angel Who Waxed Half the Floor
Creation is love at every level, Starr Daily says, and surrender is a rising rather than a defeat. Prayer that lifts up Jesus draws a person out of the pull of the earth into the kingdom of compassion. He tells the Texas Hill Country CFO in 1958 of a ragged stranger who asked for work, half waxed the floor, said a few words that ended a crisis at home, and was gone.
The Apostolic Fiddler at Sing Sing
At the Texas Hill Country CFO in 1958, Starr Daily tells campers that most personal petitions are already answered and wait only to be acted on. He follows three women named Harriet who prayed themselves steadily worse. Among them was a concert violinist who came right only when she carried her music into Sing Sing prison.
Everything is passing away, from quill pen to fountain pen and wood fire to oil. Starr Daily reads the same newness in what he calls the age of the Holy Spirit. He tells the Texas Hill Country CFO in 1958 that God promises joy, peace and power, and then trouble. Trouble is the only one of the four that makes anyone grow.
The Preacher Who Read His Faith Away
A minister who studied until his faith was gone ended in prison for forgery. Starr Daily, night nurse in the prison hospital, prayed with him until both his ulcers and his spiritual blindness were healed. The talk warns the Texas Hill Country CFO in 1958 that "Jesus of Nazareth is passing by" and can be let pass.
[Read the "The Preacher Who Read His Faith Away" Transcript]
Starr Daily traces the inner tension of religious people to a refusal to walk in love, and contrasts it with a tensionless but stagnant life he had glimpsed from a passing train. From the 1958 Texas Hill Country CFO.
The Little Earthquake in a Grain of Wheat
Walking through John 6 at the Texas Hill Country CFO in 1958, Gertrude Dekock Keehn shows that Jesus meant the bread of life as his word, not his literal body. She then leads a Communion meditation built around a grain of wheat breaking through the soil like a small earthquake.
[Read the "The Little Earthquake in a Grain of Wheat" Transcript]
Turning Jesus Over Like a Diamond
Starr Daily gives campers a meditation discipline from the Sermon on the Mount. Quiet the body, confess the secret sins of the imagination, and forgive. Then turn Jesus over in the mind like "a great big diamond" until contemplation arrives as a gift. This is one of his last talks at the Texas Hill Country CFO in 1958, given before communion.
Throw the Guilt Out the Window
In a closing-night talk at the Texas Hill Country CFO in 1958, Starr Daily maps the sure roads to a nervous breakdown: resisting your work, hoarding guilt, and refusing to forgive. He answers each of them with "Let all that ye do be done in love." He answers them too with the pastor who drew a woman's decades-old guilt out of her and threw it out the hospital window.
The Pinpoint of Light Within
Without Vision the People Perish
Broadcasting Prayer
The Night I Spent in the Lockup
Not all messages are live on the site yet.
The Sonic Barrier of the Spirit
Glenn Harding argues to the 1959 Texas Hill Country CFO that living faith means testing what Christ commanded, until you break through a barrier of resistance into real power, borrowing the image from a pilot passing the speed of sound. He notes that water takes far more heat to cross from boiling into steam than it takes to reach boiling at all.
Roast Preacher for Sunday Dinner
The Shoelace That Would Not Tie
Our God Is Able
Maintaining the Spirit Flow
Vestibules To Prayer
In the Presence of the Eternal