Childhood
James' father was an Oklahoma preacher in occasional poverty for a decade until 1973 at Red Fork Church of God in Tulsa. At times they had to live in the church office. Money and spirituality were central to him. "The hardest part of my childhood was reconciling how Dad poured his heart into his work, how he helped so many people and yet he couldn't afford to pay for haircuts for me and my brother," Ray wrote in his 2008 book Harmonic Wealth. "How could a loving God keep me from Cub Scouts on account of not being able to afford a uniform?" However, a classmate of James recalled that "Ray always dressed well and knew he'd make something of himself."
Read more about this topic: James Arthur Ray
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“[Children] do not yet lie to themselves and therefore have not entered upon that important tacit agreement which marks admission into the adult world, to wit, that I will respect your lies if you will agree to let mine alone. That unwritten contract is one of the clear dividing lines between the world of childhood and the world of adulthood.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“...I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me
because they never understand Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy.”
—Nikki Giovanni (b. 1943)
“When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)