{"id":1022,"date":"2011-03-25T09:00:31","date_gmt":"2011-03-25T14:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.austincnm.com\/?p=1022"},"modified":"2011-03-24T20:17:54","modified_gmt":"2011-03-25T01:17:54","slug":"donuts-oral-roberts-and-mary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/2011\/03\/donuts-oral-roberts-and-mary\/","title":{"rendered":"Donuts, Oral Roberts, and Mary."},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cLife without Jesus, is like a donut, like a donut, like a donut. . .\u201d<\/em><\/div>\n
<\/em>Rob Evans, aka, The Donut Man, penned the song that was the overarching musical theme of my childhood. (For all you cradle Catholics who haven\u2019t a clue what I\u2019m talking about, the punchline to the song is \u2018Cause there\u2019s a hole in the middle of your heart\u2019). I was pretty much the closest thing to a groupie it\u2019s possible for a Christian family entertainer to have. I watched at least one Donut Man video every day, religiously. I had all the fluorescent yellow tapes. Much of my early religious instruction came from the show. I grew out of the shows and the pastel-colored sweatsuits eventually (two weeks ago), but the songs were still a huge part of my childhood and one of my favorite memories of growing up in a pastor\u2019s family. <\/p>\n

Quite a few years after I set the donut puppets aside, I graduated from high school, bright eyed and rosy cheeked, and embarked on a reverse Exodus. I left the Promised Land of Texas for the Wilderness of Oklahoma – Tulsa, to be precise. Oral Roberts University. It was the only really acceptable choice for intelligent young women brought up in non-denominational homeschool families. Denim jumpers and babies weren\u2019t for me, but state universities certainly weren\u2019t either.<\/p>\n

My freshman year I began babysitting for a Catholic family with two (now four) children from China, and I genuinely loved them all. They were a babysitter\u2019s dream. I had been concerned for their poor Catholic souls at first, but the more I got to know them, the more normal they seemed. And then I discovered that the mother, an Oral Roberts University alum, had also converted to Catholicism from Charismatic non-denominationalism. I was floored. One evening I was sitting around their kitchen table after the kids had gone to bed and the parents had arrived, and it somehow came up in conversation that the Donut Man – THE Rob Evans Donut Man – had converted to Catholicism – not even something civilized like Lutheranism or becoming Episcopalian. Roman stinkin\u2019 Catholic.<\/p>\n

The news was shocking enough for me that it warranted a phone call home.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s so sad!\u201d<\/strong> my dad exclaimed.
\nI was about to agree when my mother interjected \u201cUm, he\u2019s still Christian. So whatever.\u201d<\/strong>
\nCatholic? Christian? I was even more troubled by this statement from my usually level-headed and rational mother. But, I hung up the phone and thought about it for days. Finally, I decided that if it was good enough for the Donut Man, and good enough for Kimberlie, then maybe I\u2019d better do some more research.<\/p>\n

I revisited the writings of the early Church Fathers that I\u2019d been introduced to in my Church History studies in high school, without the Fundamentalist study guides to pick apart every line. I read the Creeds, studied the Communion of the Saints, and dodged the \u201cMary Issue\u201d like it was a minefield. That\u2019s when I discovered that Rich Mullins had been through RCIA before he died.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

You know, the guy who wrote \u201cOur God is an awesome God, He reigns from Heaven above with wisdom, power and love our God is an awesome God\u201d?<\/div>\n
Yeah. Him.<\/div>\n
That was when I decided that it was way, way past time for me to suck it up and visit Mass. I asked Kimberlie if I could accompany her family to Mass the next day – the Sunday of Christ The King – and she, of course, said yes without hesitation. I remember asking the guy I was in a relationship with if he wanted to go. \u00a0\u201cUm, you\u2019re not going to ask us to convert, are you?\u201d<\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/strong>
\n\u201cNo, no, of course not.\u201d<\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/strong>
\nI had no idea what was about to happen.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cLife without Jesus, is like a donut, like a donut, like a donut. . .\u201d Rob Evans, aka, The Donut Man, penned the song that was the overarching musical theme of my childhood. (For all you cradle Catholics who haven\u2019t a clue what I\u2019m talking about, the punchline to the song is \u2018Cause there\u2019s a… [Read More]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-blog","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1322,"url":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/2011\/04\/donuts-oral-roberts-and-mary-pt-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":1022,"position":0},"title":"Donuts, Oral Roberts, and Mary Pt. 3","author":"Kassie","date":"April 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Continued from Here and Here I knew I wasn't going to be able to enter the Church that Easter, but I still wanted to participate in Lent. Being the OH so brilliant person that I am (sarcasm), I decided that giving up caffeine and coffee for Lent would be an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/category\/acnm\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":146167,"url":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/2015\/09\/walk-it-out-gods-will\/","url_meta":{"origin":1022,"position":1},"title":"Walk It Out (God’s Will)","author":"Ablaze Ministries","date":"September 3, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I used to spend too much of my time stressing about my future and what I was supposed to do with it.\u00a0\u00a0What brought me peace in that anxiety was the book of Deuteronomy.\u00a0\u00a0I love that book.\u00a0\u00a0Through it the Holy Spirit revealed so much to me about following God\u2019s will.\u00a0\u00a0A few\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Faith"","block_context":{"text":"Faith","link":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/category\/acnm\/blog\/faith-blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"WalkItOutCC","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.austincnm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/WalkItOutCC-550x366.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.austincnm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/WalkItOutCC-550x366.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.austincnm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/WalkItOutCC-550x366.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1224,"url":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/2011\/04\/donuts-oral-roberts-and-mary-pt-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1022,"position":2},"title":"Donuts, Oral Roberts, and Mary pt. 2","author":"Kassie","date":"April 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Continued from Part 1. That first Mass I visited with my fiance (we'll call him Tom) was an experience I'll never forget. I had been reading about Catholic theology, but had done next-to-no research about what actually happens at Mass. I scoured message boards, trying desperately to find a post\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/category\/acnm\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":262377,"url":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/2016\/06\/5-things-end-of-mass\/","url_meta":{"origin":1022,"position":3},"title":"5 Things You Should Do at the End of Mass","author":"Lindsay Wilcox","date":"June 21, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In my five years of blessings as a contributor here at ATX Catholic, I have taken one post per year to write something that is not a review. Instead, I write about something a little closer to my heart. 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