A Letter to My Kindergarten Teacher

I wrote the following piece for a Diversity Sunday Worship a few years ago.  I'm republishing it in honor of Dr. King's birthday.  This was published previously on the Northeast Iowa Writer's Workshop site.


 

Dear Mrs. Von Winbush,

            It has been over 30 years since I first walked into your Kindergarten class.  It’s been well over 30 years since I came to school on the second day, got lost and walked the halls calling, “Mrs. Von Winbush, where are you?”  And you popped your head out of the door saying, “I’m right here, Amy.”

            It has been over 30 years since you sparked my love of learning and knowledge.  My love of schooling has waxed and waned, but never my love of learning.  I have you to thank for that.

            I did not know that our class was a small part of history until I was old enough to study history. At five, I did not understand that you were the first African American teacher in my elementary school.  I didn’t understand that the schools in Nashville, Tennessee were finally integrating.  I would not have been able to comprehend the barriers you were overcoming or the walls you were breaking down.  I only knew that I loved you, and what I saw reflected in your beautiful eyes was acceptance, care and delight.

            You were one of the first people who taught me, just by being you, that love does not comply with restrictions, boundaries or social conventions.  I’m sure I was an astute enough child to realize that there were differences in our skin colors, and that you didn’t look like most of the people I knew at the time, but I loved you more because of it.

            Thank you, Mrs Von Winbush.  Thank you for giving me a bold start in life.  Thank you for setting me on a path of acceptance.  Just my memory of you has helped me to resist the prejudice and intolerance and hatred I’ve seen in so many places since our time together.  I struggle to live up to the lessons you taught me, but I will be forever grateful that I started my education – in and out of the classroom – with you.

Sincerely,

Amy Busse Perkins

The 1970 -71 Kindergarten Class of Burton Elementary School

Nashville, Tennessee

Courage to Listen, Risking Response

“A Rare Word”

I Samuel 3:1-20

January 15, 2012

            My grandmother, who was quite deaf by the time she died, absolutely refused to get a hearing aid.  She had a terrible time trying to carry on a conversation because she couldn’t hear.  She also used to watch television with the volume so high I would have to leave the room before my head exploded.  None of us, not her children nor her grandchildren, could convince her to even ask her doctor about a hearing aid.  Why?  Because over fifty years ago another doctor told her not to let anyone mess around with her ears.  He said there was nothing that anyone could do to make her ears better and hear more.  That was that.

            She held onto that one bit of advice like a dog to a bone.  Our arguments about how far medical technology had come and the advances in hearing aids and other devices were to no avail.  So Gramma spent approximately the last forty years of her life asking people to repeat themselves and turning up the television.  She couldn’t hear.

            Thinking about hearing reminds me of a woman who I sat next to at a potluck years ago in New York state.  She confessed to those of us sitting around her that she had just been fitted for a hearing aid.  She confided in us that her hearing had been getting bad for a while but she had put off having her hearing tested because she was afraid.  Afraid of the implications.  Afraid she would have to wear a hearing aid.  She was afraid of how that would make her feel – and look.  And she was embarrassed.  Embarrassed at not being able to hear, embarrassed at needing to wear a hearing aid in the first place.  But when she finally went to the doctor and actually tried a hearing aid she was astounded at the difference.  Suddenly she could hear all sorts of things.  She told us that she started wondering what she’s possibly missed over the years because she couldn’t hear.  She wondered if people had tried to talk to her about something and she had ignored them – not deliberately or intentionally, but because she couldn’t hear what they were trying to say.  She confessed that she was no longer embarrassed at having to wear a hearing aid she was just embarrassed that she had waited so long to get one.  The awkwardness of wearing one was trivial compared to being able to hear – really hear for the first time in a long time.

            This conversation with this woman was enlightening.  I wonder how sensitive and sympathetic I’ve been toward others who can’t hear.  How will I feel at the possibility of having to wear a hearing aid? Will I be fearful and nervous and embarrassed?  Will I live in fear like my grandmother or will I take the risk that woman took?

            I also wondered about the other kinds of hearing disabilities out there.  My grandmother did have a legitimate hearing problem, but she also had what my parents called selective hearing.  Being a parent, I realize that this problem is not only for the elderly.  A lot of times Gramma heard what she wanted to hear.  She would miss most of the everyday conversation happening right around her, but if mom and dad were trying to talk privately about a situation or a problem with one of us kids or with someone else in the family, she’d call out, “What was that about Amy?  What’s wrong?  What’s happened?”

            Probably all of us have selective hearing to a certain extent.  What we want to hear comes through louder and clearer than whatever it is we don’t want to hear.  I think this is a tendency of human nature.  Our instinct may be to filter out what doesn’t sound as good or pleasant or happy or appealing.

            There’s another aspect to hearing – listening.  Listening is a different animal and it doesn’t come as naturally to some of us as hearing does.  We hear a barrage, a cacophony of sounds everyday.  We carry on conversations and go about our daily duties and work, but do we always listen to the people around us?

            Into this hearing and listening comes Samuel.  As an infant Samuel was dedicated to the Lord.  A few years later he was brought to the temple to live as part of a promise made and kept by his mother Hannah.  Samuel grew up in the temple.  He learned from Eli and under Eli’s tutelage he served the Lord.

            At the beginning of this story Samuel and Eli are both sleeping.  Nothing unusual about that, it is nighttime.  But then Samuel hears a voice calling his name.  “Samuel.  Samuel.”

            Samuel thinks Eli is calling him.  Who else could it be?  So he gets up and runs to Eli.  But it wasn’t Eli.  Eli tells him to go back to bed.  Three times Samuel hears the voice and three times he runs to Eli.  Samuel hears the voice, but he doesn’t recognize the owner of the voice and he doesn’t know how to listen.

            Samuel wasn’t prepared to recognize the voice of the Lord, because it was an unlikely voice to hear.  The first verse of our passage tells us that the word of the Lord was rare in those days.  Visions were not widespread.  It took Eli’s perception to realize that the voice Samuel was hearing was actually the Lord’s.  And it took Eli’s instruction before Samuel knew how to listen to God’s voice and respond.

            We could have ended the story here.  The option was there in the lectionary.  But it really is just the beginning of the story.  The actual message that the Lord had for Samuel was a harsh one to be delivered to Eli, Samuel’s spiritual mentor and teacher.  As one commentator I listened to quipped, the message Samuel had to deliver was essentially, “Tell your boss he’s fired.”  The message of the Lord to Eli was a message of judgment.  The priesthood, which Eli and his sons were direct descendants of had become corrupt and fat with its own sense of power and authority.  Eli himself was not corrupt but his sons were.

            They had blasphemed against the Lord in word and in deed over and over again.  Eli knew what his sons were up to, yet he did nothing to stop them.  So Eli and his family, he and his sons together, would soon be shaken up and torn down in order to make way for a new beginning.  For the priesthood and for Israel.  Eli accepts this message with resignation and faith.  He turned over any vested interest he had for himself, his sons, his family line and he rested them in God’s hands.  His response was, “It is the Lord, let him do what seems good to him.”

            The message delivered to Samuel was probably not what either of them wanted to hear, but they did hear it.  Samuel found the courage to tell it.  Eli found the courage to hear it. He listened and he accepted the outcome, knowing that all things are ultimately in God’s hands.

            The story goes on to say that as Samuel grew up, the Lord was continually with him.  From this first experience with God’s call, all of Israel came to know Samuel as a trustworthy prophet of the Lord.  And trustworthy prophets were needed because the times they lived in were difficult and trying for this young nation.

            At that time the Philistines were becoming more and more threatening.  The priesthood was corrupt and exploitative and there was increasing pressure to name a king to lead them.  This was something that was not part of God’s original blueprint for the chosen people.

            So in those trying times, in those difficult days when the word of the Lord was a rare word – an unlikely voice – the unlikely ears of an unlikely candidate picked up on the sound.  A young apprentice, too young to even recognize that it was God who called his name, heard that rare, unlikely voice. 

            So what is this story trying to tell us?  Sometimes when that unlikely voice is heard it can be tough to discern.  It is hard to distinguish between the voice of the Lord and all of the other voices and sounds and noises going on all around us, the general din so many of us live in and with.

            We may not hear this voice directly.  It comes to us through other human voices.  It seems to me that one point the story makes is that our ability to listen is tied to our community.  Just as Samuel needed Eli to help him recognize and respond to God’s call, we need others of faith to help us hear God’s word.  We need this time of worship together, as a community, to hear God’s word, to recognize it, to act upon it.  Samuel needed help and so do we.  Our community is our hearing aid when it comes to recognizing the rare word that is God’s call.

            This story also reminds us that that God’s word to us isn’t necessarily one we want to hear.  I think I shouldn’t be too eager to catch that deep voice calling me in the night because sometimes the word from God is a word of judgment.  It is a word that demands difficult choices, difficult response.

            Certainly no one understood that better than the man whose birth, life and death we celebrate and honor tomorrow.  It was 1955 and Martin Luther King Jr. was only 26 years old when he answered the call to spearhead the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.  The boycott lasted almost a full year and essentially served as the touchstone of the Civil Rights Movement.  As I understand it, King was not absent from the Civil Rights discussion before that initial call.  But I do know that he went to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery hoping to serve God and God’s people and finish his doctorate.  He wasn’t seeking fame.  He wasn’t seeking recognition.  I don’t know that he foresaw the events that would unfold.  But when that rare word came, he understood it, he listened, and he answered in the context of a community who needed someone with the courage to respond.

I was too young to understand or even be aware of his assassination in Memphis in 1967.  But I was an heir of the outcome of his life and work.  Thanks to him and all of the women and men who walked beside him, I went to school with other children of almost every race and color and didn’t know until I was much older that there had ever been a time when that was different or forbidden.

            King heard God’s voice speaking to him, calling him and he brought those words to our nation. But let’s be brutally honest here.  Eli accepted the word of judgment that Samuel delivered against his family with more humility and grace than ever happened in the Civil Rights Movement.  It is far too easy to paint a rosy picture of that time and of how beloved Dr. King was by the general populace.  He wasn’t.  He was one of the most hated men in America.  I say this as one who grew up in and loves the South -- white America, in the South and around the country, did not go gently into the idea of civil rights for every American.  And in the spirit of honesty, although that battle has advanced tremendously, it’s still being fought today on a variety of different fronts.  But just as that rare word was perceived and heard and acted on by Dr. King and those who followed him, it’s still being heard and perceived in our midst as well.

            That rare word of God was heard in a community of faith.  And we recognize that rare word in our communities of faith as well.  It is in community that we learn to discern God’s word, to hear and listen for that rare, that precious word.  And it’s okay to admit that we all need a little help hearing.  We all need the aid of others to hear and recognize and respond to God’s word for each of us. 

            So in this community, let us remember that we are each other’s hearing aids.  Let us remember that we are here to support and console and love each other.  And we are in this community to find and give each other the courage to hear and respond to that rare word.  What are we being called to do?  How is that rare word manifesting itself in our lives?  In Shawnee?  In this sanctuary? How can we help one another take the risk of hearing that rare word? 

Let all God’s children say, “Amen!”

I Know

           My friend Chris called me the other day.  This isn’t anything out of the ordinary.  We often call each other just to say “hi,” and check in with each other’s lives.  Actually Chris doesn’t generally say “hi.”  She normally begins our conversations with “Hola chica.”  I don’t know why she starts this way, but I like it. 

            But this is beside the point.  The point is that Chris called the other day to check in.  She is currently jumping through hoops to achieve standing in an organization she works for.  That’s fine.  We all have hoops to jump through in one way or another.  And when it’s for something we really want – and Chris really wants this – then it makes those hoops, perhaps not joyful, but more tolerable to jump through. 

                                                                

            So she was telling me about the hoops, which are cleverly disguised as classes.  She has to take one class on a subject for three Saturdays, seven hours per Saturday, for a total of 21 hours.  This isn’t such a big deal to her, but she wasn’t happy that she found out she had a ton (there are other words I could use here that would more adequately express this amount, but they might not sound so nice on a blog) of prep work to complete before her first class.  It wasn’t the work or the amount of it that bothered her, it was the short notice she received.  In less than a week she had to read 100 pages of a book that had yet to be ordered, write a reflection paper based on specific questions and prepare a presentation to give to the class.  Chris being Chris, she got it all done.  No hemming.  No hawing.  No procrastination.  She did it.

            But it occurred to me as she was relating these events that this class was basically a 21 hour version of a class she already took for a semester when she was earning her Master’s degree from a renowned Ivy League university.  So I said, “Uh.  But wait?  Didn’t you take this class in school?  At a renowned Ivy League university?  Why do you have to repeat it?  Shouldn’t that count?”  And Chris’s response was a resigned “I know.”  In fact she said that a lot during our conversation.  I would state what should have been patently obvious, and she would say, “I know.” 

            To an outsider this might seem like a pointless conversation.  Yet in the context of a friendship, I think it’s helpful, necessary even, to have someone in our lives who’s willing to state what should be obvious to everyone else if only they would just pay attention already.  I think it’s important to have someone else give us the opportunity to say, “I know.” 

            I can only guess that this was helpful to Chris (although I did have her approve this blog before I published it, so if you’re reading this, it was).  On the other side of this coin, there have been countless times when I’ve called her and she’s done the same for me.  She’s stated what I know to be true and given me permission to say, “I know.”  And yes, it was and is helpful.

            It seems to me we all need friends who are willing to state truths.  Sometimes they’re hard truths that we have to hear when we are in complete and utter denial.  Chris has been this kind of friend to me.  But we also need friends who are willing to state our truth, obvious as that truth should be, out loud.  We need friends who will be outraged or insulted or just plain irritated along with us.  It’s advocacy in a way.  It reminds us that we’re not alone. We’re not crazy.  Someone else gets it.  Someone else knows that we know.  Chris does this for me too.  I will continue to be that kind of friend to her.  And so on. I can also state unequivocally that I’m blessed to have a lot of other friends in my life who show me this kind of love as well.  You know who you are. 

            So keep jumping through the hoops Chris.  Some of them will not make sense, but I trust that the outcome will be well worth it.  If your talents and skills are finally recognized, then there is no doubt.  Go ahead.  You can say it.  “I know.” 

Baptized and Identified

“Baptized!”

Mark 1:4-11

January 8, 2012/Baptism of the Lord

            The baby was first.  The little one, no more than six months old, was undressed completely and his little lips chattered in the quiet chill of the chapel where we stood.  At the center of our circle was a font with a large silver basin filled with water.  The priest with the salt and pepper beard and glasses, the sleeves of his black robes pushed up past his forearms, cradled the baby in his arms and began praying.  I could not understand the language but the ancient meaning of the words was clear.  It was invocation, supplication and recitation.  He lifted the baby up, and with firm, steady hands that never lost their grip on the child, even when wet, he swooshed the baby through the water, three times.  With every glide through the font, the priest called on each name of the trinity.  The baby was too startled to react, sputtering for breath between dunks.  With the final splash, the baby began to cry. 

            Anointed with oil and dressed in new clothes to reflect his newly baptized self, the baby was finally given back to his mother for comfort.  Now it was the toddler’s turn.  She had been watching the baby’s baptism intently, and I could see the relief in her deep brown eyes that it was happening to her little brother instead of her.  Then they began to undress her, and the relief changed from fear to fury.  The ritual was performed once more, even more impressive this time because of the priest’s ability to hold onto a squirming, screaming toddler. 

            When she was dressed and calmed, the family passed around trays of rich sweets, living up to the Arabic rule of hospitality.

            This was January 1993 and I was in Syria as part of a travel/study tour of the Near East with a group from my seminary and the larger Richmond community.  Our trip started in Amman, Jordan, moved to Syria, and from there we would journey to Egypt and then Israel. 

            But this was Syria.  We were traveling around the countryside, as well as staying in larger cities like Damascus.  Our Syrian tour guide was an efficient and somewhat nervous man, and on this particular day we had stopped at a Syrian Orthodox church.  Earlier in the day we’d had the opportunity to meet the Patriarch of Antioch – the equivalent in the Syrian Orthodox church of the Pope in Roman Catholicism.  

            When we reached the church and realized that something beyond the ordinary was happening, our guide checked with the family and they eagerly invited us to share in this profound moment in their lives and the lives of their children. 

            This was an extraordinary moment to witness.  Although I had seen other baptisms in my home church, and would go on in my ordained life to baptize many babies, toddlers and older believers, I had never seen a baptism like this.  It was especially poignant for me, because I knew that it was similar to the way my nephew Benjamin was baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church – a baptism I had not gotten to experience.

            At the time I thought it strange that the family would have a private baptism service.  It ran counter to what we profess in the protestant church, that baptisms are to be done as part of a full worship service.  In our expression of the faith, there is no such animal as a private baptism.  We are baptized into a larger community of believers.  And as the congregational vows we make at any baptism state, we promise as a community to help with the nurture and support of the newly baptized, whether that be a child or an adult. 

            I think now that perhaps this was a quieter affair because it was being done in a predominantly Muslim country, but whatever the reason I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to experience this particular moment in the lives of these children.  I never learned their names, and they are both grown now.  Maybe they are preparing to have their own children baptized as well. 

            It seems especially fitting to think of this quiet, very personal baptism in light of Mark’s gospel.  Jesus is baptized surrounded by people.  But unlike the other gospel accounts, in Mark’s telling God’s affirmation of Jesus is meant for his ears only.  No one else witnesses the descent of the dove or the voice that tears open the heavens.  In the Greek the word that is used for tear is schizo.  The only other time Mark uses this term is at the tearing apart of the curtain of the temple at Jesus’ crucifixion.  It seems to me that in both of these moments the boundaries between heaven and earth, between God and humans are ripped apart and away. 

            As I’ve preached before immediacy is critical in Mark’s gospel.  There is no time to waste.  Mark establishes Jesus’ identity from the opening verses.  And in his baptism Jesus’ identity as the Son of God, the promised Messiah is confirmed by God. 

“You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

No, the people around Jesus weren’t privy to this information, but Mark’s readers were and are. 

Jesus’ identity as the Messiah is confirmed in his baptism.  Doesn’t this mean that ours is as well?  When I watched those little ones being baptized in Syria so many years ago, I was watching an act of claiming, of identifying.  This goes beyond them being claimed by the church or a family celebration of an important ritual in their lives.  They were claimed by God.  Part of why we endorse the baptism of infants in our denomination is because we believe that God’s grace claims our lives whether we are aware of it or not.  God claims us, not the other way around.  To be baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is to given a new identity. And whether we receive a new outfit on our baptisms or not when we are baptized we are figuratively dressed in new clothes.  Our baptism seals our identity as children of God.

One of my favorite series of movies is the Toy Story saga.  I especially love the last movie, Toy Story 3.  The child, Andy, who loved his toys, is now grown up Andy, on his way to college.  Most of the toys think that they were given away to a daycare center on purpose, but Woody the Cowboy reminds them that they belong to Andy and that he still loves them.  He does this by showing them the bottom of his foot.  That is where Andy wrote his name, identifying Woody as his beloved toy.  They each bear that mark.  They are identified as Andy’s own. 

Baptism marks us.  It may not be a mark that we can see, God’s name written on the bottom of our foot, but it as a mark just the same.  Baptism marks us with grace.  Baptism marks us with love.  Baptism seals our identity as the children of God.  As we observe the baptism of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ, let us also remember and renew the vows made at our own baptisms.  Let us remember that we are claimed, that we are loved, that we are dressed in new clothes, and like Jesus we are sent out into a broken world.  Let us give thanks that like Jesus we are baptized.  Alleluia!  Amen.

Sweet Nothings

I have become obsessed with Eat, Pray, Love, both the book by author Elizabeth Gilbert and the movie based on said book.  It doesn't help that the movie plays on our Satellite movie channels every other second, so I've seen it so many times I've memorized it.  It's great to watch while doing monotonous tasks such as folding laundry.  And I seem to always be folding laundry.

What is it that draws me?  I think it's the idea of radically changing the direction of your life by taking a leap of faith that appeals to me.  I suppose it could be argued that in some ways I've already done this in my life.  But taking a year to travel and live in different cultures sounds like an adventure that is not just too good, but too amazing to be true. It's the complete moxie of her quest that pulls me in, time and time again.

Since I don't foresee this kind of opportunity happening in my own life anytime soon, I will continue to live vicariously through Gilbert's memoir.  And I will learn what I can.  One concept I hope to master in this New Year is the focus of the above clip.  Dolce Far Niente.  The "sweetness of doing nothing."

I had my gall bladder removed six days ago.  There's nothing (no pun inteneded) like having a surgical procedure, minor or otherwise, for forcing you into a state of doing nothing.  Since the surgery I have sat in our recliner, slept in our recliner, watched endless television, Netflix, and dvd's in our recliner and sucked on a lot of popsicles in our recliner.  Whether I've liked it or not, I could do nothing (again, no pun intended) more than next to nothing.

I won't make the claim that this kind of doing nothing has been sweet.  Far from it.  Even though my surgery was outpatient and done laprascopically, it's still been a relatively painful and definitely uncomfortable recovery.  Incisions hurt, even small ones.  You don't realize how much you take your abs for granted, even when they're flabby, until you have some holes poked in them.  Not to put too graphic a point on it.  I can't help but move slower, walking with a slight hunch because standing up straight is a painful exercise.  And even though I hate it, the only contribution I've really been able to make to the upkeep of the house is fretting.  I did remake the bed last night and had to sit down afterward, as exhausted as I might be after running a half marathon.  (Some of you might wonder why I didn't write marathon here.  I mean after all, why not metaphorically go for it?  But please, me?  A marathon?  Not even in the best of shape.)

As I said, this kind of doing nothing has not been particularly sweet.  I have not been living dolce far niente.  But I want to experience that sweetness.  I don't want a surgery to be the one thing that makes me slow down.  I don't just walk, I hustle.  I don't eat, I gulp.  I don't sleep, I crash.  But in this newly begun year, I want to learn what it means to savor, to enjoy, to experience real pleasure.  I want to enjoy the moments I have with people I love.  I want to taste the food I eat, delighting in each bite.  I don't want to always worry about what chore I'm leaving undone, what task I'm forgetting. 

I may not master dolce far niente in 2012, but why not give it a shot?  So here's to savoring, tasting, enjoying, loving and doing absolutely nothing oh so sweetly. 

P.S.  A friend told me he expected to see a blog about the gall of the gall bladder.  I know this piece doesn't exactly fit that description, but perhaps this is an acceptable replacement.