Goin' Down to Mama's

Sunday Morning Serenity

For just as each of us
has one body with many members,
and these members do not all have
the same function, so in Christ we,
though many, form one body,
and each member belongs to all the others.
Romans 12:4-5 (NIV)

Are we our brother’s keeper? Absolutely. A story I’m working on for Southern Living has me thinking about that a lot—the idea that we have a responsibility to help each other, to want fairness and justice for each other. That means ALL “each others,” not just the ones who look like us and sound like us and worship like us.

Attorney Bryan Stevenson’s book Just Mercy is being made into a movie, and there’s a passage in that book I hope the filmmakers include. Stevenson has been allowed a “listening visit” with some Montgomery matriarchs as they entertain Civil Rights legend Rosa Parks. The ladies give him permission to tell Mrs. Parks what he hopes to accomplish through his Equal Justice Initiative, and after he rattles off a long list, she looks at him and says something like, “You’re gonna be tired, tired, tired.”

It is indeed tiring and trying and often painful to do what we feel called to do, especially when we’re standing up for, or reaching out to, people who are very different from us. I’ve been guilty of shying away from it, giving myself a pass. But in Romans, Paul writes that “in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” We’re connected by the grace and forgiveness we’ve received, the grace and forgiveness we’re supposed to share with each other.

When I talk to new writers about researching a travel story, I sometimes say, “If you do it right, you’ll be really tired when you get home.” The same is true if we really believe what Paul said and act on the idea that “each member belongs to all the others.” If we do our share of that good work, we’ll be really tired when we get Home—tired but blessed.

[Image by Jack Moreh at Freerangestock.com]

Sunday Morning Serenity

While I was looking through some old pictures at Mama’s, I ran across a group shot of my sixth-grade class, taken during a field trip to Montgomery. And since I’m working on a story about the capital, I took the picture to work. Looking at it, one of my young colleagues asked me a question I hadn’t expected: “Who in this picture was your special friend?” I smiled and pointed to a sixth-grader with long blond hair (and very stylish seventies plaid pants). That blond girl and I sat together in church yesterday and watched the son of another dear friend say his wedding vows.

I’m way past the age where I take relationships like that for granted. Unlike some of the exchanges I see on Facebook, life-long friends don’t lob insults at each other and walk away. They listen, they care, they support, they work through their differences, and here’s the biggie—they forgive. My oldest and dearest friends have forgiven me for all kinds of nonsense over the years, and I love them for that. I’m grateful to them for it.

Forgiveness, grace, and mercy have been very much on my mind lately because I read, as part of my story research, a book called Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, and had the opportunity to talk with him about it. The theme of his book is this: We’re all better than the worst thing we’ve ever done.

It’s a liberating and powerful truth. Coming to it from a Christian perspective, it means that Christ’s gift of grace frees us from being defined by—and burdened by—our mistakes, our moments of rebellion and bad judgment, our sins. We have to take responsibility for our actions and turn away from those ill-chosen paths, but then we have to believe in grace and forgiveness. And we’re called upon to show grace and forgiveness to others.

“Let us then approach
God’s throne of grace with confidence
so that we may receive mercy
and find grace to help us
in our time of need.”
(Hebrews 4:16 NIV)

 

 

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

Cheeto and I did a major Story Shack purge yesterday. Actually, I did the purging while Cheeto stared at me with mild curiosity from his nap chair. I threw out old projects I’ll never work on again and back issues of magazines I’ll never read again. I gathered up all the drafts of my second book for a not-so-ceremonial burning. I swept and Swiffered and opened an air freshener. I replaced the cloth-covered storage bins that Cheeto has clawed to pieces and bought him a scratch pad in hopes of distracting him from my lovely new storage bins, fresh from Target. I still need to dust, but once that’s done, the Shack will be ready to start on a new book.

The second one, which is called Almost Home, was so much harder than the first, in part because I was trying to capture the kind of relationship I had with my sister-friend Missey. The book isn’t about us—it’s set during World War II—and the characters Anna and Daisy aren’t by any means supposed to be us. But the particular brand of friendship they share—the kind where you can read each other’s mind, talk each other off any ledge, and call each other out on your respective nonsense, knowing it won’t damage the friendship one bit—that’s what I tried to get at. And that’s why I dedicated the book to Missey.

Working on Almost Home has made me think a lot about the nature of friendship, how we can experience it at all different levels. I have a circle of high school friends whom I treasure. Those women are special to me because we came through girlhood together—all the giggle-fed sleepovers and heartbreaks over cute boys and proms and dances and will-I-have-a-date hand-wringing. We knew each other when, so we understand each other now in a way that nobody else ever will. I have friends from college whom I’m equally close to but for different reasons. We were on our own together for the first time—making our first home, even if it was just a sparse apartment with shag carpet and a recycled grocery-store bread rack for an entertainment center. (Wouldn't have had that without you, Ging:) And we were there for each other when family seemed far away. As an adult, I’ve made friends who have weathered the grown-up stuff together, some of it thrilling, some of it heartbreaking.

I’ve always been blessed with the kind of family who allowed me to take their love for granted because it was so evident and so freely given. But my friends—they don’t have to love me. I’m so thankful that they do. And I hope I’ve given back as much as I’ve received.

Sunday Morning Serenity

I’ll say this about my unusual line of work: You never know who you’re going to meet or how they’re going to bless you. But I guess that’s true of life in general.

Yesterday morning, as a favor to a friend, I interviewed a woman named Tommie who has led an amazing life and still spends every day exploring new possibilities—what can she learn, what can she make, who can she help today?

She grew up in the forties and fifties, in a poor rural Alabama family with no economic advantages or even possibilities. But she had a few things going for her: She was intelligent, determined, and pretty (though she’s far too humble to describe herself that way). Tommie entered a local beauty pageant and won. That crown came with the first set of nice clothes she had ever owned and introduced her to a woman in the county’s home demonstration organization who taught her the social graces that helped her present herself well and gain confidence. (As a country girl who had never set foot in a cocktail party until I went to work at Southern Living—a place where every party is done to the
nines—I totally related.)

Tommie went on to marry, have kids, complete her doctorate, and travel all over the world. She became a teacher and developed all kinds of artistic pursuits. Her house is filled with expressions of her creativity. Most of all, she still loves to “do for people.” And I love that old Southern expression: “do for people.”

I’m generally my most miserable when I’m completely focused on myself: Why is this bad thing happening to me? Why can’t something good happen for me? The minute I can pry myself out of the me’s and do something for somebody else, my whiny little world gets bigger and brighter. And I have a fellow country girl to thank for reminding me of that.

[Image by Unsplash @ Freerangestock.com]