"We Matter" - my friend Noell

Lying in bed last night, I couldn't stop thinking about:
my teenage daughter awash with insecurities,
my lesbian friends unable to marry legally in Virginia,
all the articles I've read recently about bullying,
and recent news that the Violence Against Women Act has become a partisan issue.

What came to mind was the scene in Kathryn Stockett's novel The Help where Aibileen Clark, a black maid, is falsely charged with stealing and has to say a quick goodbye to Mae Mobley, the white child she has raised:

"Baby Girl," I say. "I need you to remember everything I told you. Do you remember what I told you?"

She still crying steady, but the hiccups is gone. "To wipe my bottom good when I'm done?"

"No, baby, the other. About what you are."

I look deep into her rich brown eyes and she look into mine. Law, she got old-soul eyes, like she done lived a thousand years. And I swear I see, down inside, the woman she gone grow up to be. A flash from the future. She is tall and straight. She is proud. She got a better haircut. And she is remembering the words I put in her head. Remembering as a full-grown woman.

And then she say it, just like I need her to. "You is kind," she says, 'you is smart. You is important."

+ + +

I want to send a belated Valentine's Day "thank you" to the people who help us to believe such things about ourselves. May we say them over and over again, until we know they're true.

Getting Started

I have never wanted to blog. I don't exactly understand blogs. I've never thought I had the time to blog. And I'm not sure, really, it is smart for me to begin a blog. I reserve the right to stop at any time. But this week I started a coaching program with Auburn Seminary, and, in the midst of one of the workshops, I thought: this is useful stuff. I ought to share this stuff. And I thought: to journal through this six-month experience might help me to get the most out of it. Hence this blog.

As members of my church, Ginter Park Presbyterian in Richmond, VA, know, I don't even title my sermons. So . . . to name the blog was the first hard thing. (Design is the second, and I'm going to need someone's help with that!) The closing worship of our time in-residence was my inspiration. J.C. Austin (Director of the Center for Christian Leadership and Coordinator of the Auburn Coaching Institute) read the following two passages:

Can I see the buds that are swelling
in the woods on the slopes
on the far side of the valley? I can't,
of course, nor can I see
the twinleafs and anemones
that are blooming over there
bright-scattered above the dead
leaves. But the swelling buds
and little blossoms make
a new softness in the light
that is visible all the way here.
The trees, the hills that were stark
in the old cold become now
tender, and the light changes.
- Wendell Berry

And again Jesus said, "to what should I compare the kingdom of God?
It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."
- Luke 13:20-21

J.C. invited us, throughout the time we are coached, to be mindful of the changes God is already working into our lives - changes that we can't see yet or that we are only beginning to perceive. A new softness in the light. A small amount of leaven. These mark the beginning and make transformation possible. Light and leaven. If you choose, I invite you to look for them - and to experience their power - along with me.