Beautiful lives

Imagine a body that refuses use of its own arm or leg.

A body that hides or harms its own ears or eyes or tongue.

I have often pictured the body of Christ, refusing the gifts of women: limping with one leg, trying to serve with just one arm.

But these past few weeks, grieving the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, so many many others, I find myself grieving the body of Christ, fractured, unfeeling, fingers gone, hard of hearing, almost blind.

But that assumes – wrongly – that the white church is the body, the white American evangelical church. In reality, the white American church is a tiny fraction, a small bruised part of a larger, stronger, healthier whole.

I’ve been blessed to see the beauty beyond the bruise. In my grieving this week, I’ve also been giving thanks, for so many beautiful lives that have challenged my understanding of love, wholeness, wisdom, grace.

My first experience of kindness from a fully-grown man was from my grandfather’s handyman Andy, who rescued me from a foot trapped in a cinder block where I was not supposed to play. He rescued me without reproach and sent me on my way with a gentle word of caution. When he showed up at my elementary school as custodian I was thankful. We rarely spoke, but his smiles and nods encouraged me: I was seen, remembered, strangely protected. I remember him coming to my third-grade classroom to tell my teacher President Kennedy had been shot. He was weeping without embarrassment. For years he was my touchstone of a gentle, feeling, dignified manhood.

My first real love of the spoken word came from hearing Martin Luther King, his voice rich and fervent on the transistor radio my grandfather carried around our house. In King’s voice I heard the rhythms of the King James Bible, suddenly alive and present with a promise I could cling to: a world where every child mattered, where justice wasn't just a forgotten word. A world where sons of former slaves and sons of former slave owners, where the daughters of the famous and the daughters of the forgotten could feast together at a table large enough for all.

My first joy in science came in Mr. Reed’s chemistry class. I was in tenth grade, awkward, shy, mostly silent. He was large, dark-skinned, exuberant.  I had never seen a teacher take such joy in his subject. Molecules! Atoms! Compounds! Combustion! Every word was a poem. Every experiment an adventure. To him, the entire world, every tiniest particle, was a marvel worth watching. He made me believe I might be a scientist. That vision soon faded but the love of the world, the marvel at its mysteries, enriched my life and continues to this day.

The first challenge to my white-centric paradigm of parenting came from the littlest Richards boy, in the makeshift nursery in our West Philly church. Looking thoughtfully at the rag-tag collection of tattered dolls, he asked me,“does your daughter have any BROWN dolls at home?” The question had never occurred to me, or to the other young parents who had gathered supplies for our nursery. I remember him asking again, when my response was slow in coming: “does she have any BROWN dolls at home?” “No,” I told him. “But she will. And I’ll make sure we have some brown dolls here. Would that be better?” “Yes.” He nodded. Yes. Ever since, I’ve done my best to make sure the children’s spaces where I’ve been, nursery, playroom, preschool, school, have had books and toys that reflect ALL our children. Never perfect, but the question was a gift.

So many questions have been a gift.

Gene Denham dropped into my life during a dry, doubtful time. I was struggling to finish a PhD, exhausted and depressed from late nights with a baby who never slept, overwhelmed by the work of a big old house that ate every moment of free time. Gene was Jamaican, leader of an organization that partnered with my husband’s employer, Scripture Union. She was traveling to raise funds for her work with Jamaican students and spent two weeks in our front bedroom, heading off to speak at churches in the evenings, spending parts of each day with me and our little daughter.  Gene was full of enlightening stories, but also full of questions: why did we live where we did? What were my plans, as mother, as student? How did we balance the resources we had, against the larger need of the world? Every question probed the tight boundary of what it means to be a Christian here, in this country, in this time. Every question gently challenged assumptions of privilege, or protection, or the idea that my life, my resources, my time is my own. Her life was lived in contradiction of that privilege. Her honesty and beauty shook and rearranged me.

I could go on: Jean Matthieu from Côte d'Ivoire, the international student our church matched us with during the years he studied here. He taught our entire family to see with different eyes: to celebrate the fabulous wealth of an orchard full of apples, to question the need for so many choices at our overwhelming grocery stores, to grieve at the ways our culture divides children from their elders. So many miles from his own family, I remember him shaking his head when children at church were herded off to their own programs. “Families should worship together.” He was sure of it. “Families should be together.” His belief in the unity of families shaped ours, a gift that keeps on giving.

Otis, Carol, Georgette, Cricket. Mary. Jennifer. Charles. My heart is full when I think of all I’ve learned from your questions, insights, voices, lives.

I watch the protests, wonder, pray: is this the sea change we’ve been waiting for?

What more can I do to lend my weight toward that dream of justice rolling like a mighty stream?

How do I show up, stand up, listen better, love more deeply, courageously, consistently?

Those are questions you prompted, questions I’ll be sorting through in the days and weeks and years to come.

Of this I’m certain: the church, the body of Christ, is alive and well in black and brown and tan, not confined or defined by divisions and bruises of the white American evangelical church.

And while I’ve learned much, there is much much more to learn.

Lord, give me the humility to listen well and the courage to live out what I learn.

For today, thank you for these beautiful voices and beautiful lives.

Keep them safe.

Hear their prayer.