Florida Found

A journey to peace

Text and photograph by Jamie Francis, Times photographer

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 5, 2000

Dottie Friedland is floating again. Her smile says so. Illuminated by the light of the full moon and a single street light, the 82-year-old is exactly where she longs to be: circled by dear friends as her spirit rises off the ground.

Dottie is here because of a small sign that she saw taped to a bookstore window more than 11 years ago. "Metaphysical Service," the sign read.

"Oh, how nice," Dottie remembers saying aloud.

When she arrived at the service, she walked straight into the arms of a stranger, the Rev. Jack Bittler, who was to lead the meditation.

"It was total warmth and love, and I'd never met the man," she says. "The only thing I could think of was, "Here I am, an old woman; what in the world am I doing?' "

But Dottie has learned that there are no accidents in her life. Everything happens for a reason; the rest is just searching for answers. So it's no surprise to her that she is in Bittler's back yard again, with about 30 friends. They have come to the well-kept bungalow in downtown St. Petersburg for another full moon meditation.

Dottie knows she is supposed to be here, and she is thankful for the clarity. It has not always been this way.

She was raised in the ultra-strict environment of Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Amarillo, Texas. The fundamentalist group required women to wear dresses and cover their legs with white hose. They were also told to remain quiet during services.

Her mother was more strict than the church. She once told Dottie that she was going straight to hell. Dottie's sin? Smoking a cigarette. Her mother thought all Sundays should be spent in church or in quiet prayer. Those prayers scared the young girl to death. " "If I should die before I wake,' that frightened me," she recalls. She would cry herself to sleep.

"I ran from all religion. It was so full of fear and judgment and discrimination."

Dottie was still running when she volunteered for World War II as a nurse. She figures she might still be trying to elude her upbringing if not for a near-death experience in a Dallas hospital.

She was given cocaine to numb her body for a bronchial operation, but the doctors overdosed her on the drug, and her heart stopped.

"I floated up to the ceiling, and I was mad at them to begin with, but then I saw the most amazing colors of light. I saw a fence, but I wasn't allowed to cross that fence. You wouldn't imagine it, but I saw black and white Holstein cattle on the other side of the fence and beyond that a sweet little chapel. I woke up and saw a bunch of men standing over me who needed a shave and thought, "This is not heaven.' "

Since that moment, she has not doubted an afterlife. She is just as diligent in her faith as her fundamentalist mother was with the Presbyterian's, but there is a big difference between the two.

"We are not a church," Dottie says of the metaphysical group. "We act as a church in some ways because of the support we give each other, but we don't preach. I think preaching gets an awful lot of people in trouble."

When the alley gate of Bittler's back yard swings open, Dottie is already there, standing by the small orange tree. She greets everyone with the same cordial smile and issues each person scrap paper and a No. 2 pencil. She instructs them to write something on their paper that they want to draw into or eject from their lives. On her paper Dottie writes, "more humility, less judgmental."

The service begins with a song, "Oh great spirit, earth and sky and sea. You are inside and all around me." Everyone holds hands as they sing, standing in a circle in front of the folding chairs set up on the grass.

Sounding more pleasant and soothing than the best book-on-tape reader, Bittler asks them to close their eyes. He promises to take them on a short journey. To where? Just get in the bubble of white light that Bittler talks about and let the spirit do the rest.

Time to dig out those scrap pieces of paper. Bittler starts a fire in a small urn and slowly all come forward and drop their paper into the flames. "We all think of things we want to change in our lives," says Dottie, "but the ceremony of fire and release -- the writing down of those things -- puts some action on our thoughts."

Before the smoke clears, several people pick up drums and rattlers and form a circle. Everyone is about to have his aura fluffed.

One by one, each person enters the circle. Dottie steps in, closes her eyes and opens her palms toward the full moon. The circle rotates around her, friends moving the pulsating drums and rattlers up and down her body. The ritual is supposed to displace any negative energy that radiates from the being.

When the silence returns, Dottie is angelic. Bittler gently places his hands on her shoulders. Her feet are on the ground, but Dottie Friedland is floating again.

-- To contact Jamie Francis, call (727) 893-8319 or e-mail jfrancis@sptimes.com.

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