Dear Folks,
It’s funny what you hold onto from your childhood—what words or lyrics or images you carry. When I was a little guy, younger than 6, we lived in a small, southern college town. My dad was an erstwhile student and manager of the book store, my mom was the Dean’s secretary, and we had a babysitter named Savannah who “watched” us. Most afternoons after lunch, Savannah would take a little nap while my brother and I were supposedly resting; in fact, the two of us would wait until a deep quiet fell on our apartment, and then we’d tiptoe out the front door. Sewanee was our oyster, and there were always pearls for two pint-sized explorers to discover.
“Grandmother Chilton” had never married, didn’t have family nearby and neither did we, so the three of us adopted each other. We thought we were sly, but she must have always heard us coming: by the time her picket fence gate clicked behind us, she would appear on her porch with cookies or peaches or lemonade and a book to read. Afterwards my brother and I played pirates in Abbo’s alley, hiding inside bushes and swinging over a trickle that swelled after a rain. My favorite was helping “Ray” mop the floors at the gym. We’d sneak in a door he propped open to let the heat out, and then refill his buckets and chase water across the pool deck with a squeegee. When we moved away, “Ray” was the last person I went to tell good-bye, and we both cried.
The chapel was always open at Sewanee, and that has stuck with me, too. Students and little boys, even dogs, were allowed to come and go through that space whenever they wanted, and all of us dropped in and out of services at will. It never occurred to me that what went on in that soaring room ever started or ended; whatever happened there was always going on, it seemed, and everybody was invited.
The reality was more complicated. There were African students at the school, but no African-Americans, and the church in the South at that time was frequently on the wrong side of civil rights. Savannah and Ray were two of my closest friends, but they entered buildings through different doors than I did. Down the road at the Highlander Fold School, things were changing. There, my parents and scores of other individuals were trained to challenge the status quo with dignity and non-violence, and black people and white people were partners engaged in a common cause. I remember crowding lots of strangers in our big Chevrolet. When I asked her why, my mother said, “These days you can’t just open the doors and say ‘Ya’ll come!’ You’ve got to go out and find each other.”
In 1968 the law of the land changed, and since then everyone has been invited through the same doors to sit at the same table, whether in the break room, the board room, or the lunch counter. But we know the reality is more complicated. We still can’t just open the doors and say “Y’all come!” In our schools, on our streets, in the workplace and where we pray and play, we still need to go out and find each other, get to know each other, love each other, serve each other—black/white, rich/poor, male/female, gay/straight. We need each other.
Have compassion for everyone you meet,
Even if they do not want it. What seems conceit,
Bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign
Of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going on
Down there where the spirit meets the bone.
–Miller Williams
God is always looking for us. Will you go with me, where the spirit meets the bone, out the doors of Redeemer, to find the face of God?
Love,