Worthy of Note

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The last twelve weeks have been strange. My mother discovered that her aortic valve was failing and that, without open heart surgery to replace it, she likely wouldn’t last the year. Obviously, she chose the procedure, and since that decision was made, we’ve been dealing with the fear, worry, and frustration that comes with healing and recovery.

I’ve been with my parents in Florida twice, leaving my own family back home in Atlanta for three and a half weeks and six weeks respectively. Some days have felt like weeks thanks to the elastic nature of hospital time while other moments have passed in a blink.

Being in the ICU, step down care, and eventually rehab has compelled me to grapple with my both mother’s mortality (since she nearly died after the surgery) and my own. I’m just a few weeks shy of my forty-fifth birthday—at what most people consider to be the halfway point of my existence—and contemplating that fact has led me down some darker hallways of thought. I’ve seen what’s happened to Mom and other patients, and with a grimace, I’ve wondered, Is that what’s coming for me?

Watching my mother learn to walk again after a stroke has made me appreciate my own feet, knees, legs, and hips more than ever. What marvels they are! When I want to get up and go, I can do just that. And while I might not be as fast or as flexible as I was twenty years ago, there is no place forbidden to me.

Her struggles have made me look at things differently, especially those things I overlooked before. My kidneys and bladder work beautifully, on a schedule that I have control over. My lungs expand and contract, a pair of beautiful pink bellows, drawing in the oxygen I need and eliminating the carbon dioxide I don’t. I breathe deeply throughout the day, relishing how good it feels to be able to do so.

My heart—my strong, beautiful, capable heart—beats seventy or eighty times a minute without word one from me. Sometimes, I lie in bed alone at night and rest my right hand on my chest right above it. I feel the slight flutter and thump each time a part of it opens and closes and sincerely thank it for what it has and continues to do for me.

But it hasn’t always been this way.

I’ve spent so much time absolutely hating my body, wishing I could unzip it like a dress, drop it to the floor, and put on something—anything—else. I’m too tall, my feet too large. I’ve stared at every bulge and sagging area with dismay, wishing I could be just a little smaller and firmer. I don’t see my dark brown eyes as beautiful (though my husband certainly does). All I can see is how one, slightly altered by the hemangioma I had until I was a few months old, is noticeably smaller than the other when I smile. I don’t love my hair, which is thinning in the front due to some particularly terrible genetics on my mother’s side, so I hide it with headbands and scarves. People always comment on how cute or sporty they look, but to me, they’re a source of shame.

I’ve never even enjoyed the romantic thrill of being picked up and carried by a man. I tell myself it doesn’t matter, that there are a dozen ways to be wooed. But if we’re being honest, I feel like I’ve missed out. And sometimes, I get pretty damned angry about it.

The end result? I try not to smile too broadly in photographs. I use my height as an excuse to be in the back of every group shot, hoping and praying no one will see too much of me and judge me for every little failing I can’t help but notice. And I also tend to wear darker colors with minimal patterns, nothing short or sleeveless, so I don’t draw attention.

I never do anything physically risky for fear I’ll embarrass myself—that I’ll be the fat chick who falls on the dance floor or who gets stuck somewhere. Back in the 1980s, there was a video of a woman in a bigger body trying to parasail, but rather than be lifted gracefully into the sky, she stumbles and falls. The poor thing is dragged through sand and surf before finally being hoisted up into the air, her arms pitifully flung out like the instructor showed her.

People laughed of course; they always do. That’s the point of a show like America’s Funniest Home Videos after all, but I was horrified. All I could think about was how she must have felt, and I decided right then in my little pre-teen heart that I would never put myself in a similar situation.

Do I still want to be smaller, smoother, and more graceful? Absolutely. That desire will never stop because, perhaps wrongly, I still believe I would be happier if I looked like the magazine spreads and make-up ads tell me I should. But I’m trying to appreciate what I have and who I am, to live in harmony with the body I’ve been given. It has needs, many of which I’ve failed to provide because I thought I didn’t deserve them.

No, my body isn’t perfect. But I’m trying to be more generous with myself. And I’m also choosing to celebrate those lucky souls who are comfortable in their own skin rather than envy them. For instance, at the gym a few days ago while huffing and sweating on the elliptical, I watched two black men work out together. Both were young and strong, but one was obviously the more gifted athlete. Lithe and graceful as a dancer, he did knee lifts and sprints, changing direction both in the air and on the ground in a way that seemed entirely effortless. It was glorious, like watching water move.

They ran football routes, laughing and celebrating whenever one bested the other. And I couldn’t help but smile too (and not just because of the beautiful display of black joy in front of me, though I’m always up for that). After being around sickness, injury, and deprivation for so long, it was a relief to witness two people who had honed their bodies to physical perfection delighting in them.

Image courtesy of Treehugger.com — https://www.treehugger.com/the-incredible-science-behind-starling-murmurations-4863751

In his poem “The Great Scarf of Birds,” John Updike describes watching a flock of starlings creating a murmuration above him. In the concluding stanzas, he writes:

the flock ascended as a lady’s scarf,
transparent, of gray, might be twitched

by one corner, drawn upward and then,

decided against, negligently tossed toward a chair:
the southward cloud withdrew into the air.

Long had it been since my heart
had been lifted as it was by the lifting of that great
scarf.

The starlings are otherworldly and nearly inexplicable, but that doesn’t stop the speaker from marveling at them. The transcendent moment they created lift him out of normal space and time into something more altogether golden. I taught this poem for years, thinking I understood it. But it was only the language I grasped, not the emotion. But I understand now.

My starlings left before I had the chance thank them. But I hope and pray I’ll always remember the moment and that maybe—just maybe—I’ll be able to delight in my body in such a way that others notice me too.

The Great Work of Remembering

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Friends who visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum warned me about the shoes. “It was the smell,” they said.

They are housed in a simple room lined on each side with piles of shoes taken from the Majdanek concentration camp when it was liberated by Russian soldiers in 1944. And on the wall above, a poem written by Moshe Szulsztein reads, “We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses. / We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers / From Prague, Paris and Amsterdam, / And because we are only made of fabric and leather / And not of blood and flesh, / Each one of us avoided the hellfire.”

They were right. The smell was haunting, as was the sight of so many shoes without owners—all of them faded to dull brown or lifeless gray, pressed flat beneath the weight of time and memory. But it was the train car that undid me.

I stood in the middle of it, and even though the doors were thrown open so visitors could pass through and the entire space was well lit, I couldn’t help but imagine it as it once was. I have read many survivors’ stories about journeys in such cars, how hundreds of people were crammed in each, the living forced to relieve themselves where they stood and trample on the dead to make space to breathe.

The “Shoe Room” at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
The train car at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

One such story is recorded in the second volume of Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer-winning graphic novel, Maus, which I was fortunate to study as a graduate student. This amazing work—a visual narrative of his parents’ experience in Auschwitz and the decades of trauma that effected their family after its liberation—speaks to the power of memory and the importance of capturing it accurately.

On January 10, 2022, Spiegelman’s book was banned by a unanimous vote by the McMinn County School Board in Tennessee on the grounds that it was inappropriate for eighth grade students. Their reasons? Nudity, curse words, and descriptions of suicide, all of which one board member found “completely unnecessary.”

A portion of the school board’s meeting minutes from January 10, 2022.

Yet these things aren’t arbitrary or superfluous, considering the stories being told.

The scenes where characters are nude take place in Auschwitz when prisoners are stripped of their uniforms and evaluated by a Nazi doctor to see if they are healthy enough to work. The curse words fly from the mouths of Nazi guards as well in the scenes set in the present day as the artist and his father wrestle with the pain and misunderstanding such trauma causes.

And the suicide? Speigelman’s mother, unable to live with the memories of her time in a concentration camp, killed herself in 1968. Her death is part of both his father’s story and his own, and it cannot be simply wiped away because it’s unpleasant for readers.

One of the “offensive” pages from Maus.

But Maus isn’t the only book being pulled from library shelves. In Wentzville, Missouri, the school board voted 4-3 to ban Toni Morrison’s masterwork, The Bluest Eye. One member, Sandy Garber, voted in favor of the ban to “protect children from obscenity.” And Amber Crawford, the parent who filed the challenge, calls Morrison’s exploration of the psychological damage created by racism “a garbage book.”

Both boards fail to grasp the truth that hatred—whether it comes in the form of racism or antisemitism—is the true obscenity. It is the garbage our country continues to wade through.

Sadly, very few white people are willing to wrestle with “The Peculiar Institution” upon which our country was founded or the painful effects racism has inflicted (and continues to inflict) on communities of color. Instead of listening to their stories—honoring their pain and taking steps to make up for the damage—white lawmakers are twisting themselves in knots to ban anything that might begin such a necessary and healing conversation.

For instance, in Texas, a Republican lawmaker named Matt Krause recently drafted a list of 850 books that deal with topics such as sexuality, racism, and U.S. history in an effort to target and remove any materials that “might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.”

Likewise, a Senate committee in Florida has approved a bill (pushed and backed by Republican governor Ron DeSantis) that would protect white people from “feeling ‘discomfort’ over the history of racism and atrocities committed by their ancestors against Black and other Indigenous people.”

The book banning, the race to stamp out CRT (which isn’t being taught in public schools by the way), and the battles over problematic statues and monuments all have one thing in common: white fragility. I know the term is controversial. Up until a few years ago, I would have balked at it too. However, I’ve done a great deal of research and soul searching over the last few years. I’ve been asking myself the vital question “What if I’m wrong?” over and over again when faced with information that pushes me out of my comfort zone.

As a result, I’ve begun to understand just how much pain and suffering racism has caused communities of color in this nation and how it continues to damage all of us because we refuse to face our collective past. This stubborn refusal keeps us from what is known as real talk—speaking to one another in love and sharing genuine communication, even if the subject matter isn’t always pleasant.

Because I am a supporter of the Equal Justice Initiative, I received a calendar from them that chronicles the racial history in the United States. These are the entries from this week:

  • January 23, 1957 – KKK members force Willie Edwards Jr., a Black man, to jump to his death from a bridge in Montgomery, Alabama.
  • January 24, 1879 – A white mob accuses Ben Daniels, a black man, of theft for trying to spend a $50 bill in Arkansas and lynches him along with his two sons.
  • January 25, 1942 – A white mob in Sikeston, Missouri abducts Cleo Wright, accused of assaulting a white woman, from jail, drags him behind a car, and sets him on fire in from of two Black churches as services let out.
  • January 26, 1970 – In Evans vs. Abney, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds a Georgia court’s decision to close rather than integrate Macon’s Baconsfield Park, created by Senator Augustus Bacon for whites only.
  • January 27, 1967 – Deputy sheriff shoots and kills Robert Lacey, a Black man, in Birmingham, Alabama during an arrest for failing to take his dog to the vet.
  • January 28, 1934 – After Robert Johnson, a Black man, is cleared of rape charges in Tampa, Florida, a mob abducts him from police custody and lynches him.
  • January 29, 1883 – In Pace vs. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds a law criminalizing interracial sex and marriage.

For each injustice listed, there are likely dozens if not hundreds more that happened on any given day. Some of them, like those involving poor decisions made on the part of the Supreme Court, are frustrating. Others, like the deaths of Willie Edwards Jr., Ben Daniels, and Cleo Wright, are heartbreaking. I know it’s tough, but take a moment and think of the physical agony and fear these men (and in Ben Daniel’s case, his sons) experienced before their deaths. Consider the people in the church congregations who left worship only to be faced with the horrific sight of a man burning in the street. Put yourself there. Suffer with those who suffered.

Also, look closely at the years in which each act of violence took place. Yes, some happened more than a century ago, but that doesn’t mean they’re all part of a dark and savage era far removed from our own. Several of these events happened in my grandparents’ lifetimes. Two—the deaths of Willie Edwards Jr. and Robert Lacey—happened after my mother was born.

I know it’s daunting to consider just how evil racism allows us to be, what it has compelled people like us to do in the name of “white superiority.” It’s hard to face the fact that your people, your kin, likely participated in one or more acts of racial violence, discrimination, or prejudice. We want to push such knowledge away with both hands, to shut our ears and eyes to the truth. It’s easier and safer to remain ignorant, to continue in our naïveté at the expense of our fellow human beings. But that’s what led us here, beloved. It broke us then and continues to break us now. It leaves us hollow, a people with half a soul.

Compare this to the Black community’s willingness to engage in real talk about Bill Cosby in a new documentary by W. Kamau Bell. You can see it in their reactions; they aren’t eager to talk about the once untouchable comedian. After all, he was a hero to so many in the 1980s when The Cosby Show was at its zenith. As one interviewee says, “You can’t speak about Black America in the twentieth century and not talk about Bill Cosby.” So yeah, it’s tough to admit he had severe moral failings, that he raped countless women and got away with it. But as another interviewee says, “It feels like I have to have this discussion.”

What a difference that makes. Rather than continue to live with the lie that Bill Cosby sold them, rather than continue to lionize him as a paragon of virtue, people of color are willing to have the hard conversation, to clear the air and speak truthfully about the man and his legacy. This only happened a few decades ago, but by bringing the truth (however hurtful it might be) out into the open and claiming it, a kind of healing will take place.

I wish the white community could do the same about so many things in our past. Such lament would hurt deeply. It would grieve us to the core, but oh, when we were done, what good would come of it! Instead of wasting our time avoiding discomfort, becoming more morally weak and flaccid by the day, we could grow strong and straight and true. We would know ourselves for the first time—the good and the bad—and move forward as whole people.

An accurate accounting of history is an incredible gift. Through it, we understand both ourselves and how our nation has evolved over time. We can learn from our mistakes and avoid making them in the future. But when we remove books that “cause psychological distress,” seek to silence voices we disagree with, and cling to and prop up lies, we are doing ourselves tremendous harm. It is the great work of remembering rightly—however painful it may be—that will save us all.

Putting Our Grief to Good Use

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Because the news cycle moves so quickly and there is no shortage of horrible, disheartening stories out there, it’s easy to forget that just one month ago—on November 30, 2021—Ethan Crumbley opened fire in his high school, killing four people and injuring seven others.  

In the days after the deadly shooting, we saw videos of students hunkering down in classrooms and heard stories from survivors. Flowers, stuffed animals, and candles were left on the school’s entry sign. A candlelight vigil was held at a nearby park. Signs reading “Oxford Strong” started showing up in front of local businesses. GoFundMe pages were created by the dozens to help the victims and their families.

These efforts to manage our collective grief happen so frequently they almost feel trite to me, a kind of performative ritual that must occur each and every time a young person’s life is cut short by gun violence. We soothe ourselves with platitudes and beautiful gestures and find comfort in the kindness of strangers. See, the world isn’t all bad, we whisper. There are still so many good people.

There were also tributes to the four students who died that day: Hana St. Juliana (14), Madisyn Baldwin (17), Tate Myer (16), and Justin Shilling (17). According to eyewitness reports, Tate Myer was killed while trying to disarm Crumbley. Soon after the news was released, a petition was created to rename the school’s stadium in his honor, garnering more than 83,000 signatures in just a few days.

I saw a post on Instagram detailing Myer’s actions and the call to honor his sacrifice, and rather than scroll past or give it a fleeting like or comment, I took screen shots. I was deeply bothered by the post, though I didn’t understand why at the time. The gesture is a kind one for certain. Students and members of the community want to lionize this young man, to remember his actions on that dreadful day. The petition’s organizer, Drake Biggie, said that doing so would allow “his bravery… [to] be remembered forever and passed down through generations.”

I thought back to all the schools I attended as a child (and there were many) as well as the ones where I served as a high school teacher for more than a decade. Each of these campuses had gyms, stadiums, auditoriums, or fields dedicated to someone—a famous graduate, a local celebrity, a benevolent member of the community. But I didn’t know any of them personally. No one I worked or attended those schools with seemed to either. The names on those buildings were nothing more than random collections of letters.

If the petition is successful and the school’s stadium is renamed after Tate Myer, there will be a somber ceremony made to commemorate the change. Speeches will be given, ribbons cut, and balloons released. People will feel as if something good has been accomplished. But in time (and sooner than anyone would expect), his name won’t resonate. People won’t remember who he is or what he did to deserve such recognition. It’s simply the way of things.

Actions like this are an attempt at closure, a way to redeem a loss or “bring about beauty from ashes.” But catharsis prevents real change. When we focus only on closing the loop or helping everyone heal, we lose sight of what caused this trauma in the first place: guns, poor parenting, a lack of mental health services, and good old human cruelty.

What an event like the one that happened at Oxford High School should do is make us righteously furious. It should lead us to “get into good trouble,” as the late John Lewis once said. We shouldn’t permit ourselves to be tranquilized. We should get angry and stay that way. We should protest every single factor that led to a sixteen-year-old boy having to throw himself in front of a gun to save other people.

If we don’t start addressing the elements that lead to school shootings, we’ll simply continue a pointless cycle. A violent act will lead to an investigation, but nothing will come of it. We will mourn both collectively and in the silent chambers of our own hearts only to move on. And a few weeks or months later, it will happen again in somewhere else in the U.S.

Another young man will express his rage with a hail of bullets.

Another child will lay down his or her life to save others.

More children will become statistics instead of college graduates, spouses, and parents.

More candles will be lit and makeshift memorials created.

How many times does it have to happen before we finally stop pacifying ourselves and put our grief to good use?

A World Without Weapons

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I have dwelt too long
with those who hate peace.
I am for peace; but when I speak,
they are for war.

— Psalm 120:6-7 (CSB)

********

Like many white Americans, I grew up with guns. Nothing excessive. A rifle for deer hunting. My great great grandfather’s pistol that didn’t work (but no one had the heart to throw out). A .38 hidden in my parents’ bedroom, pulled out only to be cleaned or when my father was out of town on a business trip. I was neither drawn to nor enamored of them. They were simply there, part of the mise en scène of my family’s life, much like the laundry basket, the rotary telephone, and the oversized wooden fork and spoon decorating our small kitchen.

But for every person like me, who grew up with a few weapons and no real feelings about them one way or the other, there is person who who was raised to adore guns, a person who—if given the opportunity—would perhaps build and altar made of them and lay prostrate before it.

Don’t believe me? National Geographic photographer Gabriele Galimberti has captured some stunning images of people with their arsenals artistically laid out before them for an upcoming exhibition she’s calling “The Ameriguns.” According to her research, “Of the all the firearms owned by private citizens for non-military purposes in the world, more than 40% are in the USA. Their number exceed that of the country’s population: about 400 to 328 million. In proportion, that’s more than 120 for each hundred; more than one per person.”

And those guns aren’t simply sitting on shelves or in safes either. They’re out and doing irreparable damage. According to Everytown Research, “Every day, more than 100 Americans are killed with guns and more than 230 are shot and wounded.” There are in average of 38,826 gun deaths in this country each year, 60% of them suicides and 36% homicides. And, lest you think the homicide percentage isn’t that bad, be aware that the United States’ gun homicide rate is 25 times higher than that of other high income countries.

If you’re interested in learning more about the negative effects of guns in America, particularly where the white community is concerned, I highly recommend both of these books.

It’s one thing to see weapons glamorized in films or in video games, which I don’t support. It’s another to see them touted in commercials by people who are running for public office. These individuals are supposed to be reasonable and balanced, people we can trust to make good decisions at the local, state, and federal levels in our name.

Recently, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the representative for Georgia’s sixth district in the U.S. House, ran a commercial promising to “blow away the Democrats’ Socialist agenda” using a 50 caliber gun to destroy what looks to be a perfectly good Prius.

But this (aside from the tacky raffle aspect) is not new in Georgia politics. During the 2018 campaign, the state’s current governor, Brian Kemp, ran a series of ads designed to appeal to red state voters, many of them featuring weapons and explosions. He claims he’ll “blow up government spending” and that he proudly “owns guns that no one’s taking away.”

Both Rep. Greene and Gov. Kemp are Christians, which makes their embrace of weapons and bombastic aggression even more troubling. We are meant to be a people who turn the other cheek and love our enemies. We are told that the highest ideal is not to be warmongers but peacemakers. It is by seeking peace that we will be known as sons and daughters of God.

And they’re not alone. Many fellow believers take their love of God and guns very seriously. There are extreme examples like The Rod of Iron Ministries in Texas, which thankfully are well outside the norm. However, in many of your average Southern churches, it is common to find hyper-masculine men’s retreats featuring everything from paintball and turkey hunting to gun ranges and tactical courses. (If you are interested in learning more about this, I highly recommend Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s amazing book, Jesus and John Wayne.)

Beloved, I am so unbelievably tired of it. I’m numb down to my bones, and my heart is heavy with grief. The church is meant for beauty and truth. It is our highest calling to make the love of Christ manifest to the world. But for the most part, I can’t help but feel we are failing at that task. Failing quite miserably, in fact.

That’s why I’m not interested in aggression or “defending” a certain way of life. I do not feel threatened by those who are not like me. I’m with Chef José Andrés, founder of the amazing charity World Central Kitchen, who says, “instead of building higher walls, let’s build longer tables.”

I sometimes feel hopelessness pulling at me like a rip current, threatening to pull me out into a cold and lonely sea, but these two images have helped me stay afloat and fight against the bitter tide.

“Christ Breaks the Rifle” by Otto Pankok
Image courtesy of https://profetizamos.tumblr.com/post/627636704068714496/christ-breaking-a-rifle-by-otto-pankok-1955
“Christ: Swords Into Plowshares” by Kelly Latimore
Image courtesy of https://kellylatimoreicons.com/collections/signed-print/products/christ-swords-into-plowshares

Both are currently hanging in my library where I can see them when I sit down to read. Each day, they remind me that I don’t serve a heartless god, one who revels in bloodshed and human suffering. I serve Jesus, the humble servant who laid down his life for the world and who tells me the Christian’s highest goal is not victory or domination. Instead, he says: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”

He promises me that one day God “will dwell with [mankind], and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

My savior says, “He will settle disputes among the nations and provide arbitration for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plows and their spears into pruning knives. Nation will not take up the sword against nation, and they will never again train for war.”

Breathe in, beloved. Breathe in and remember that Jesus doesn’t take up arms. He takes them in his nail-scarred hands, breaks them over his knee, and drops them in the dirt where they belong.

If you are aching for a world without weapons, without anger, and without fear, you’re not alone. I’m with you. Countless millions are standing alongside us, praying and hoping. And that day is coming. Until then, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

A Better Day That’s Coming

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Crabgrass is growing in the yard between the brick steps. It is among the roses and hydrangeas. The garden, so carefully planted this spring, is slowly going to seed. Wild grasses are overtaking the boxwood wall. A small world that was once tidy and prim is overspreading. Vines cover the carefully spread mulch, and stones walkways share space with wild lettuce.

I have watched this all happen in slow motion, throughout spring and now into late summer, and find I now lack the will to fight. I no longer want to beat that unkempt wildness back. I wish I could just look past it, view the chaos and disorganization as something that has no impact on my life. But I can’t seem to do it. My eyes are drawn to every imperfection, every failure—all the ways I botched my promises to the corner of this world that is my home.

Then there is the tub that won’t drain. The water-stained kitchen ceiling. The sofa constantly shedding pleather like dead skin. My children’s closets. Everywhere I look, something is falling apart, ceding to decay. There isn’t a single place where everything stays put, where a problem solved doesn’t instantly revert.

Image courtesy of The Gleaner. Located at https://www.thegleaner.com/story/news/2021/03/05/rideout-weed-control-vegetable-garden/6906585002/

Surrounded by so many minor tragedies, all of which leave me tired and defeated, is it any wonder that the events of the past few weeks feel like a pile of bruising stones laid relentlessly on my chest? My feelings about COVID-19 come in waves: One moment, it’s fear for my children. In another, I can only feel anger toward those who continue to refuse life-saving vaccines and masks. In a third, it’s grief for those who have died needlessly (and often alone), struggling for breath and begging someone to save them.

I watch people running alongside planes at the Kabul airport, fighting for space on the landing gear—grimly holding on, knowing that even if they fall to their deaths, it’s a far better future than the one the Taliban has to offer. I witness mothers hurl their toddlers over razor wire into the arms of American soldiers, people sleeping in the cold on beds made of stone and cardboard. Sobbing, I pray as best I know how in these strange and trying times, “Lord, fix it. Help them. Have mercy. Please, Lord, have mercy.” And I wonder if my words even travel beyond the tacky popcorn ceiling I hate so much.

I sit, hands over my mouth, and listen to the stories of survival in Haiti. I suffer alongside a woman whose foot was crushed by falling debris and who is recovering from its amputation in a hospital bed in the open air. There is no hospital to house her, for it is also damaged and on the edge of collapse. And then the rains came, so even the small comfort of dry, clean sheets was ruined.

And it hits me, there is no comfort here, no space that is safe from death and destruction. It’s easy to forget that in my middle-class suburban neighborhood—a place where I can hold ruin at bay. For a moment, I quieted the groaning of creation and knew peace. But I am so frail, so feeble, and my best efforts bought only a scant few days of relief, a speck both invisible and unremarkable.

The world is screaming—loud and insistent and in need of deliverance—and there is nothing I can do. I can only bear witness, leave my eyes and ears open to the suffering of others, but to what end? How does my becoming a vessel, however well-intentioned, alter the tide of human suffering? It doesn’t. And yet I continue to hold space, to let myself drown time and again.

I drown each day but do not die. And every time I return to life, I find my lungs can hold just a bit more air. My heart can manage one more beat. My legs grow stronger and can deliver me to the surface one more time before I succumb to grief.

Image located at https://www.ilikewallpaper.net/iphone-wallpaper/Drown-In-Water/20600

Maybe this is what Paul was trying to tell the Corinthians when he wrote, “Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair; we are persecuted but not abandoned; we are struck down but not destroyed. We always carry the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed in our body. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’s sake, so that Jesus’s life may also be displayed in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor. 4:7-11).

Like David, I cry out, “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long will I store up anxious concerns within me, agony in my mind every day?” (Ps. 13:1-2). And while, like him, I know “my heart will rejoice in [God’s] deliverance” and that one day “I will sing to the Lord,” (vv. 5-6), I refuse to turn this moment into a spiritual platitude, a tidy story with an uplifting ending. We have been fed a steady diet of those tales in the American church, and our feast of wishful thinking has left us saccharine and spiritually flaccid.

Dwelling in brokenness is horrible, but I can’t help but feel there’s a reason for my being there. Sadly, the church is no help. I have found no answers there, only dishonored promises and continued failures. To me, it is a place that’s turning inward, concerning itself only with members’ comfort—planning ladies’ socials, community BBQs, and children’s programming while the world outside continues to burn.

But Jesus has not failed. He is there with the people waiting at the Kabul airport, desperate to flee their homeland into an unknown future. He is there with the Haitians who are worshipping outside their damaged churches. He is with me in my distress and bone-crushing grief, his heart more sorrow-filled than my own over the state of the world, even though he can see beyond it to the newness that is to come. And because I believe in him, the one who neither leaves nor forsakes us, I trust his words are true and that a better day is coming—for all of us.  

I May Never Know

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“I can’t say that I’m looking forward to it,” my husband said as he combed his long blonde hair in our bathroom, “but I know it’s something we’re supposed to see. The kids too.”

I knew exactly what he meant. Going to a museum situated on a site where enslaved people were once warehoused, one focused not only on the evils of slavery and Jim Crow but also the egregious modern-day sin of mass incarceration, isn’t exactly anyone’s idea of a good time. However, I had been wanting to make the two-hour drive to Montgomery to visit it, so when a friend asked if I would go with her, my entire family got dressed up and hopped in the truck.

The Legacy Museum and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, both created and managed by the amazing team at the Equal Justice Initiative, puts visitors through the emotional wringer in a number of ways. You begin by walking through a darkened hallway lined with cells on one side. In each, there is a holographic projection of an actor playing a slave, telling his or her story through the bars, each one of them heartbreaking and painful.

After that, you enter a large space divided into the three sections I mentioned earlier—slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration—and every square inch of the room is covered in something to see and experience. There is plenty of text for people, like me, who like to take in information via written words. However, there were also many videos, photographs, and interactive exhibits there for people, like my sons, who preferred a more visual and hands-on experience.

We were all taken aback by different things. For me, it was the sight of a young boy standing on a milk crate being fingerprinted by a uniformed police officer. He wasn’t even tall enough to reach the counter, but that didn’t stop law enforcement from booking him for marijuana possession and tossing him into the “criminal justice system.” I gasped the first time I saw the image, and every time it came back around in the scroll on a high-def screen, I felt the shock all over again. It never got any easier to see, and I think that’s a very good thing.

Photograph by Steve Liss. Located at https://www.movingwalls.org/moving-walls/8/no-place-children-voices-juvenile-detention.html.

For my husband, it was a letter written to the EJI by a person experiencing incarceration, asking for help with his case. At the end of the letter, which is written in a childish, uneven script, is a drawing that looks like it was created by someone younger than either of our sons. After reading the letter and looking at the art for a long time, my husband had to take a moment to sit down and breathe.

My sons kept coming back to a wall packed with jars of dirt—each one filled with soil from a spot where a confirmed lynching had taken place. There are many different types of earth present on that wall, each of them a different color and texture, but all of them represented the same painful fact. Someone died atop this soil. Their blood wetted it as they were hoisted up a tree, tortured, and unceremoniously cut down.


Photograph by The Equal Justice Initiative. Located at https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/museum.

I found myself spending more time in the newer areas of the exhibit, looking through articles and exhibits that were new to me. However, the main reason I wanted to make the trip to Montgomery in the first place was to see what had happened in Greene County, Arkansas—my birthplace. I wanted to know what had taken place there, specifically in my hometown. According to some research I’ve done, Paragould was a “Sundown Town,” meaning that black travelers and visitors were told to “leave town by sundown” lest they be killed by some upstanding white citizens. And the black population was violently expelled multiple times between 1888 and 1908.

Growing up there, I don’t remember ever seeing a black person in town, and with good reason. According to the site linked above, “Economic boycott has kept many African Americans out of sundown towns. As motel owner Nick Khan said about Paragould in 2002, ‘If black people come in, they will find that they’re not welcome here. No one will hire them.’”

You read that right, folks—2002. Two years into the new millennium, racism was still alive and well in the little hardscrabble patch of earth I once called home. It still is.

I knew my home city and county weren’t innocent when it came to racism and racist actions, but I couldn’t find any stories about lynchings that had taken place there. And one of the main reasons I wanted to visit the museum and memorial was to see if I could discover more information.

Inside the museum (where photography is prohibited) I found one want ad in a post-Civil War newspaper written by a woman named Pleasant Beale in Paragould, Arkansas. She was looking for her mother, father, brother, and uncle—all of whom were lost to her after she was sold to a man named John A. Beale in Alabama. If I was going to find anything substantive, it was going to be at The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which is a five-minute drive from the museum.

Image courtesy of the Last Seen Project at Villanova University and Mother Bethel AME Church. Located at http://informationwanted.org/items/show/640.

According to the NAACP, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States between 1882 and 1968. The Equal Justice Initiative maintains a different count, but it is quite likely that both are incorrect since historians believe the true number is underreported. However, the EJI is committed to fostering discussion about this very uncomfortable topic, bringing secrets to light, and giving families and communities a better sense of who they are and how they can be better.

According to the memorial’s website, “The site includes a memorial square with 800 six-foot monuments to symbolize thousands of racial terror lynching victims in the United States and the counties and states where this terrorism took place. The memorial structure on the center of the site is constructed of over 800 corten steel monuments, one for each county in the United States where a racial terror lynching took place. The names of the lynching victims are engraved on the columns.”

A photograph of me taken by my amazing friend, Aline Mello. Check out her poetry at https://www.thealinemello.com/.

Since photography was permitted at the memorial, I can show you some images I captured that day. The steel monuments resemble coffins, and the county and state each represents is engraved on both the front and the bottom so it can be read regardless of where it is displayed. In one part of the monument, the boxes are hung from metal poles. At the topmost level, it is easy to read the names and dates since you are at eye level with them. However, as you walk down, the steel boxes are seemingly pulled up into the air like a lynching victim, and by the end, they are hanging well over your head—twenty or so feet in the air. It’s an overwhelming sight. You can feel the names above your head, even if you can’t read them, and the weight of all that happened sits on your heart like a lead weight.

I couldn’t find a steel box with Greene County on it, but I thought perhaps it was hanging in one of the higher reaches of the monument and I had just missed it. However, to the right of the monument, identical steel boxes to those hanging on display lay flat on the earth, row upon row. I walked through the Arkansas section slowly, both hoping I wouldn’t find something and longing to finally have my answer written in steel.

A close-up shot of the Brooks County, Georgia memorial. It records the death of Hayes Turner, his wife Mary, and their unborn child. Mary’s story has haunted me for the better part of twenty years. You can read more about their story by visiting https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/may/19.

I got the former. Greene County has no lynchings on record according to the EJI. However, according to their research, a mass lynching of 24 men, women, and children occurred in March of 1866 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas (about a three-hour drive away from Paragould). I saw jars bearing the names of those victims on the wall my sons were so obsessed with in the museum.

I don’t know what I felt standing there, looking at the space where Greene County should have been. It certainly wasn’t relief. Just because I couldn’t find evidence doesn’t mean such evil didn’t happen in my hometown. It’s likely buried somewhere in an overgrown forest glade, under the large tree in the town square, or perhaps in the hearts of the town’s oldest living residents, those who knew about or perhaps even witnessed what took place.

I may never know what happened, but that doesn’t absolve me, my family, or any of the other white residents who called Paragould home then (or now) of guilt. We are obligated to look and to ask because it’s only when we’re willing to be truthful about the places we call home that any kind of healing can occur—for either the victims or the perpetrators. It’s time to get past the lies and half-truths, to stop pushing what we’d rather not admit under the rug. It’s time to have an honest conversation about our country’s history when it comes to race. We’ve let those sleeping dogs lie for far too long.

  • A shot of the monument from the center.
  • Another shot from the center of the monument.
  • A third shot from the monument’s center.
  • The monument from a distance.
Click on each image to see an expanded version of a shot I captured at the monument.
  • The monument also boasts amazing sculptures like this one depicting the idea of “Hands up. Don’t shoot.”
  • A sculpture depicting the horrors of the slave trade.
  • A sculpture made to honor the women who walked during the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Speaking Volumes

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Over the last few months, thanks to COVID-19, I’ve gotten to see inside a lot of people’s houses. Their offices and bedrooms, living rooms and kitchen tables and back porches have all been made readily available to me through the magic of videoconferencing. I’m thankful I’ve been able to work from my library—not only because it’s a space I cultivate and enjoy, but also because it seems to delight other people.

But not all bookcases are created equal according to a brilliant Twitter account, Bookcase Credibility (@BCredibility), which bears the tagline, “What you say is not as important as the bookcase behind you.” They have a wonderful time analyzing bookshelves behind people during interviews and online chats, often rating them based on a variety of factors and creating delightful reviews as palate pleasing as a well-crafted amuse bouche.

That got me to thinking about my own bookcases and what I display on them. What do the volumes I’ve chosen to keep over a lifetime say about me? Do I have too many? (As if that was possible!) Too few? Do they say my reading style is academic, eclectic, or common?

When my husband’s parents were up for the Fourth of July, my mother-in-law commented (without judgment, mind you) that I own a lot of Dean Koontz books. She’s right. I do. Sixty-two to be precise. A mix of new hardcover volumes and dog-eared paperbacks collected over a lifetime. (The only author that comes close is Stephen King at a robust 45, though I’ve likely read his entire oeuvre thanks to libraries.)

Some people might look at the three shelves, his exclusive real estate, and pass judgment on me. Perhaps they’d take me less seriously because of my love for a popular author instead of someone like Proust. (However, I will have it said that I own Swann’s Way and have plans to read it sometime soon. I just have to work up the nerve.)

But down on the other end from Mr. Koontz are two entire bookcases of classics I read when I was in college earning and working as an English teacher—everything from Kobo Abe to Richard Wright. I have one shelf devoted to modern and classical poetry. Another to drama. Epics. Memoirs. Theology. Biographies. Histories. Books about writing. Heck, I even have books about books. And I love all of them. Each has taught me something, helped frame and mold me in some way.

But Dean Koontz was there first.

When I was growing up, my family moved a lot—roughly every two years. It was hard to make friends and even harder to keep them in the pre-internet age. We often moved in the summer to avoid losing momentum at school, but it also meant that each time we came to a new city, my brother and I had a three-month long wait before we could start making friends and fitting in. Sometimes, we found a few neighborhood kids to pal around with, but more often than not we were on our own. So we spent a lot of time at the movies and, you guessed it, reading books.

Each time we relocated, my library was the last thing to be packed up and the first thing set out. It was a soothing process for me, collapsing and reconstructing the wall of safety I’d created for myself, and Dean Koontz was among the most reliable of my brick masons. When my life was messy or I felt half-crazed, I could fall into one of his novels and forget for an hour or two.

I read widely as a child, but there were some days when I just wanted the comfort Watchers had to offer or the romantic wonder of Lightning. Whether it was Twilight Eyes, Phantoms, or Whispers, I could always count on plenty of entertaining twists, and though evil might have the upper hand for a time, good would always prevail (often thanks to a Golden Retriever). That was important to an overweight, bookish girl like me who had to put herself out there over and over again. I had to believe in the goodness of people if I was going to make it, and Mr. Koontz helped me do that.

Since those challenging days, I’ve gobbled down countless books. I’ve read Moby Dick, Ulysses, Anna Karenina, and The Count of Monte Cristo. I’ve long loved Jane Eyre, The Scarlet Letter, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Great Gatsby. I cried reading Frankenstein and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, been thrown into harsh reality by Brave New World, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451, and escaped into both Middle Earth and Narnia. Thanks to a beloved professor at the University of North Florida, I’ve even read The Canterbury Tales in Middle English (and can still recite most of the prologue, which is always a big hit a parties).

But Dean Koontz will always have a special place in my heart (and on my shelves) because he was there on some hard days, the ones where I had to leave a house I liked or a town where I’d managed to finally fit in. I’d look through the rear window and sigh, thinking about how unfair life could be, but before we hit the interstate, I’d have one of his novels open, my eyes scanning silently left to right as the miles rolled around on the odometer of our Buick Regal and we eventually arrived at whatever place happened to be next on the agenda.

I never judge a book by its cover or its owner by the books he or she chooses to display. On the contrary, I think shelves contain an even greater story than any you find in the tomes that reside there. Together, they tell a person’s truest narrative: who she once was, who she is, and who she is becoming. They represent joy and sorrow, love and loss, the places where she got confused and where she found herself again. If you look at them the right way (and ask the right questions), you’ll get to know a person more intimately than a decade’s worth of conversation could manage to provide.

 

** If you’d like to see the library in all its glory, here’s a quick video. The music you hear is the peerless J.J. Johnson on trombone. **

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wSBftwaY75t5bBr1TEmAVjLFL6k1y_Qe/view?usp=sharing

Coming to Terms With It All

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I thought I was handling this entire COVID-19 shut down thing fairly well. I finished the CSLI year one fellowship program in fine style. I’ve read twenty-two books, so far, and next week I’ll complete reading the Bible from cover to cover in ninety days. My family built and planted a garden, installed a Little Free Library in the front yard, and has plans for both bees and chickens. I’ve been doing Keto and have lost about twenty pounds, all while working and managing kids, both in school and during the rudderless summer days.

Don’t get me wrong; I have my down days, too. And there have been more of them than not lately. Being forced to stay in first gear for a few months has given me ample time to consider the fact that 142,000 people have died, often scared and alone. I’ve had to spend even more time coming to terms with the deep racial issues in this country as well the plight of people groups like the Uyghurs in China. I’ve watched as protestors in Portland have been abducted off the street, wondering what it means for our right to peacefully protest both now and in the future. I’ve listened as people tangle themselves in knots arguing against wearing a mask in public rather than simply choosing to love their neighbors by doing so and even witnessed a woman have a nervous breakdown in real time thanks to the glittering magic of social media.

Yeah, it’s been rough to say the least. However, I’m doing all this from a very privileged position. Both my husband and I are working from home, and our kids have space to continue schooling here as well. We have a solid internet connection, devices for everyone in the house, food on the table, and anything else that we need to be successful in these very strange times. But even with all that, it’s been difficult to keep my head above water some days. I cannot imagine how folks who have lost jobs or are trying to figure out childcare for the coming school year are managing.

But I haven’t cried over the last few months. Not even once. No matter how overwhelmed I’ve been or how sad I’ve felt, not a single tear has fallen from my eye. But then the dadgum Clydesdales came on.

I’ve been watching my team, the St. Louis Cardinals, play intersquad matches to get ready for the 60-game season starting at the end of this month, and since there are no commercials, the broadcast fills the time between half innings with great moments in Cardinals history, live shots of fans from around the park last season, and so forth. At least once a game, they show the horses pulling the Budweiser cart around the warning track, an Opening Day tradition in St. Louis going back to 1933 and the repeal of Prohibition. Every year, they announce this moment with great fanfare; even the players stop what they’re doing to watch the team of eight horses, along with two green-clad drivers and a Dalmatian complete a few laps around the stadium while the organist plays “Here Comes the King” and fans clap along. I look forward to seeing it (often on TV and once in person) every year. That procession meant baseball had come back and signaled the true beginning of summer for me.

But we didn’t get it this year. We haven’t gotten a lot of things. Maybe we’ll never get them again. It’s hard to say when the world seems to flip over every twenty-four hours. For the most part, I’m glad for the changes. I’m happy people have had to slow down and spend more time with their families. I’m beyond thrilled that the environment is healing because of a decrease in transportation and shipping. I think the BLM movement got a huge boost in visibility because things like baseball and bars and brunches weren’t there to distract us, to serve as a kind of Soma that numbed us to the reality of the world. Yet, still I grieve because life as we know it has unquestionably changed forever. I was able to keep a lid on it, to process everything that meant academically and logically, until I saw those massive hooves high stepping and shining ribbons flowing in the popcorn scented air.

One time while I was watching, a haiku by Kobayashi Issa came to mind:

This dewdrop world –
Is a dewdrop world,
And yet, and yet…

The poem expresses a Buddhist concept, one that espouses the world is in some sense an illusion (the word for it is maya). Like water rolling in an unknown direction on a leaf, the world is full of causes and effects, a web of choices and changes we cannot control. The dewdrop world is a dewdrop world. But that final line from Issa changes everything. Yes, the world may be somehow illusory, but that doesn’t mean it’s without longing or sorrow or tragedy. Those emotions as well as ones like joy, love, and peace are all part of the story we’re living.

Watching those horses trot was my “And yet, and yet…” moment. I can’t stop the bad things that are happening around me. I can’t even fully protect the good things I have or the people I love. I know that, but seeing a moment that has been part of my life for forty-plus years, something that brought me joy, and having it suddenly feel like an old newsreel was unsettling. I felt the sadness of the present moment in stark contrast to the simple joys of yesterday, and the difference was breathtaking. It cracked me wide open and mixed up all the thoughts and emotions I’d managed to keep neatly compartmentalized. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or bad—maybe it’s both—but I’m leaving space for it, allowing myself to feel it rather than move along to the next thing on the ol’ to do list because as Ecclesiastes 3:1 tells us, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (KJV).

Everything Which Is Yes #3

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I don’t think there’s a single arena of life that COVID-19 hasn’t radically altered. Everywhere I look, trees are blooming and things are coming to life, but my kids’ sports are cancelled. We can’t go to the doctor’s office unless it’s an emergency. School and work are still going on, but they’re happening in the comfy (for now) confines of our suburban Atlanta home. Honestly, we’re beyond blessed. We each have a laptop to work on, solid internet service, and room to spread out. We have a nice neighborhood to walk in as well as a backyard with a porch. We’re also beginning to build raised garden beds to grow produce, bringing two beehives back to the yard, and applying for a permit so we can have chickens. These projects will both help us pass the time in a healthy way and, in the long run, help us be more independent.

Because I have multiple sclerosis (and am therefore immunocompromised), getting out and volunteering isn’t an option for me, but I want to help my neighbors. One thing our family loves to do is read, but our libraries are closed for the duration. And that got me to thinking about people who might enjoy a new book or two during this crazy season (especially if they can’t afford to buy them online). Thankfully, there are Little Free Libraries dotted all around us, so we decided to clean off some shelf space and donate a few well-loved tomes to folks who might welcome the pleasant distraction only a book can offer. To find Little Free Libraries near you, visit this site.

Two baskets full of books (for both grown-ups and littles) later, we set off in my trusty yellow car. The first two libraries we found had solid offerings, and we took a book from each (making sure to leave a few in return). But the third one! Oh, the third one! It was in a family’s front yard, and it was—in a word—perfect. The library was painted to match the owner’s house. It was spacious, so the books could stand up straight in two rows. The glass was clean, so you could see everything inside before you opened the door. There was a little bench nearby to sit down and scan a book before leaving, and the owners had even put a jar of precious Clorox wipes in there so people could sanitize what they took and put in! How freakin’ thoughtful is that!? I ended up taking three from that one because it had a great selection and left several of my favorites behind (including an autographed copy of A Gentleman In Moscow).

There was something about that entire experience—being able to both give and receive in such a beautiful, intentionally designed, and welcoming space—that left me feeling somehow lighter than I have in the weeks since the coronavirus hit the United States. I didn’t talk to the people in that house, but I felt like I had a conversation of sorts with them. I got to know them just a bit through their library. It was obvious they cared about it (and by extension the people who came to use it), and I was thrilled to be able to contribute something. We were making a connection in that space, however brief, and it was a reminder that people care and life will go on eventually. And when it does, I hope I can do a better job building and maintaining community.

On the way to stop number four, we passed a little house where kids had written “Everything will be okay!!!!!” in sidewalk chalk across the width of their driveway. Topped with a very detailed rainbow, it certainly stood out, and we stopped the car to look at it for just a second or two. The fact that those kiddos decided to take the time to post that message, to encourage and reassure people they’d never meet struck something deep inside me. They, too, were reaching out with all those colors and exclamation marks. They were building community in some small way. Both they and the library owners were speaking shalom into this broken, scared, sin-sick world. Bless them. Bless them all, Lord.

As night drew in on the last day of this very long and stressful week, I stood on the back porch watching the sky fade from gold to pink to a muted purple-gray and enjoying cool evening air full of storm promise. I listened to the soothing murmur of wind moving through the tall pine trees, transforming them into long-limbed dancers that graced the sky with slow waving. Perhaps they, too, were speaking shalom. Or perhaps they were simply swaying to the music of the spheres that’s just beyond our fathoming.