Karla Davis

What a powerful individual. What a good friend. What a gracious soul. Karla was good at a lot of things but her greatness came from her ability to understand pain and to understand the value of a strong moral character. Karla had been through a lot of pain in her life. I am sure at times it got her down and very discouraged. But as time went on she rose above all that and explored the value she could gain from the pain so she could help others. She became one of the most understanding and insightful individuals I have ever met.

I only met Karla just over a year ago through an organization called Kinship International. She loves to talk and so do I, so we found ourselves talking about a lot of stuff. I would talk about something I had done and she would say, “I did that too.” Or she would say this had happened to her and I would go, “Wow, I experienced something like that.”   I talked about the anniversary of my wife’s death and she would talk about her losing two husbands to death. She shared with me about her baby that she and her first her husband had lost and how hard that was. She talked about why she lost the baby and why she could not have more children.  I shared with her that Kathy, my wife, and I had lost a baby for the same reasons. We did have two more girls but only because medicine improved enough to keep Kathy and babies safe.

A real kinship began as each of us found for once someone else on this planet that understood our experiences. Karla started calling me “Twin” and I stopped being so lonely. We talked about our loves and our dates. We talked about our understanding of Native American culture and their embracing of what they called two-spirits. We talked about our understanding of the gospel in the Adventist historical event of the Minneapolis General Conference in 1888. We talked about Herb Montgomery and how his representation of Christ was in line with our life experiences.

Karla told me how it was too much for her to deal with the harmful destructive behaviorism she found among many of the conservative hypocritical Adventist in Michigan along with the dishonesty of some of the local church leadership there. It was too much for her and she left the church of her childhood in search a passionate relationship with God. Her stories about cover ups and denial are heartbreaking. I shared with her how that the more gospel embracing Adventists of California were flexible enough for me to stay and fellowship in spite of the church’s rejection of Jones and Wagner and Ellen White’s support of them. As we talk we believed that God had wanted it to happen that way. He had wanted one of us to journey inside an organized church and one of us to journey outside any organized religion. There was so much that both of us needed to learn, it was like we were two different sides of the same coin and now the coin was coming together.

No matter what subject or story we approached, Karla had a depth of insight that was very attractive. Her ability to understand things could take a person to their very core. Her intellect was very expressive and I told her that for the right person that would be very sexy. She had a hard time seeing herself as attractive, but in the end, I convinced her and she started to work up a dating profile. Karla was looking forward to finding a new soul mate.

She cared deeply for her friends and she had many. Karla was an empath, she could read people’s feelings, much like my Kathy could. She was fun and did not get stuck on small differences. She missed not being able to have kids but her nieces and her nephews were important to her. She had a heart that was huge and she very much wanted to make a difference that really mattered.

Most of all Karla had fallen madly in love with this ever expanding and most dynamic understanding of God. Abba and Momma where her very soul and she loved to see them in new ways.  She followed a unique set of doctrines, but the power of her beliefs was found in how love was the center of who
God was and how we should treat each other better because of that.

When Karla loved someone, she loved them with her full heart whether it is in a friendship, in a mentorship, or as a lover. Karla told me about a friend she had. They had worked together for a while. Someone accused them of being more than friends. They had only been friends but then Karla realized there was so much more there and the relationship could not continue, so Karla found herself once again in a world of pain and questions. Karla believes that God used this to lead her on a journey to discover a much deeper part of who she was. But now the journey was over and as we talked I asked her if she had been able to let go. “I still love my friend,” she said. I advised her to find a counselor. She did and she was finally able to let go. Then she finished her personal profile, it was full of all the energy and spunk that is Karla. Yes, Karla has loved and lost a lot but she has gained so much more and she knew it.

Karla started working with me on a project called BRG Street Community. More on that later.  Karla’s assistance was a great blessing to me and helped move the project along. Karla thought she did not have much to offer. She had plenty to offer.  First, she was able to get me in the right frame of mind each day as we started out. She helped me see how God was leading. Her empathic abilities helped to fit the emotional parts of the project together as I worked on the logistical pieces. I enjoyed telling her to just do a task that was assigned to her and she would tell me but I do not know how to do it. I would then say, exactly, and that is why you are going to do a great job. Because then she would be free to feel her way through the assignment which was exactly what was needed.

Karla and I have one thing in common that is very different from most other humans. We both seemed to have a male and a female brain or a dual gender brain. This was something we had more recently come to understand because of the advances in science on brain development. But it made sense of a lot our childhood and human interactions. In the womb, there are very complex processes of events that make us unique but also these process in general control how male or female each of us is and included in these process is brain development. My explanation for me is that the events that grow the male brain happened, however, the events that shut down the female brain characteristics did not happen, leaving me with both capabilities. I also have a dual voice and shorter limbs. I have always had a high IQ but now I know that it is not a high IQ but a compound IQ, both a male IQ and a female IQ. I am not female and neither was Karla male, we just had some characteristic of both genders.  But I have always been able to relate to females a lot better than other males. Karla has always been able to understand males a lot better than other females. Because she thinks with a male brain too.  As much as modern science is starting to understand epigenetics and their affect gender development, Karla found the Native American understanding of Two Spirits to be very helpful and I dug into the resources on Ancient understandings of Eunuchs as gay men and transgender individuals. We would tease each other about which brain was talking.

Karla and I not only talk a lot, we also prayed a lot. We prayed for our families, especially Karla’s nieces and nephews. We prayed for Karla to find a new love, one that Abba and Momma had prepared for her. We prayed for BRG Street and for Jennie’s film. We prayed for homeless youth and those that felt the sting of family rejection. We prayed that this wonderful being that is called by a ton of names could be truly revealed. That Their love for mankind could be understood.

Karla was looking forward to the day when we could stop waiting for Heaven to come and we as human brothers could just live together in peace and compassion. She was dreaming of a better world, one that was green and full of life. A world where technology was not in the hands of greedy enterprises but in the hands of restorative communities. She believed that when Christ pointed to a new Kingdom he meant here on earth now and not as some far off escape. And together we were work on seeing that kind of place happen here in an urban garden setting in the next few years. No correct doctrines needed, we just needed to put some pieces together that would allow us humans to care about each other and the planet we live on. Now I must carry on without her, I pray that God will bring another member to our team like her. Some day soon I want to hold a vespers in a rooftop garden full of birds, flowers, and fish and dedicate that garden to Karla Davis.