"ALL SAINTS DAY: MARY STROUPE, BERNICE HIGGINS, JAMES JEFFERSON"

 “ALL SAINTS DAY – MARY STROUPE, BERNICE HIGGINS, JAMES JEFFERSON”

We are at the time of the year when we remember the dead – the saints, the sinners, people who have had profound effects on our lives, as individuals and as communities.  We have two days in a row for engaging the dead – Halloween (derived from All Hallows Eve) and All Saints Day on November 1, also known as

“Day of the Dead” or “Dia de los Muertos” in Mexico.  The Mexican approach is much communicative and celebrative, whereas ours is often more horrifying and puzzling.  As the old saying put it, “The Victorians repressed sex and were obsessed with death, whereas we in the modern world repress death and obsess with sex.”

Whatever your approach to these subjects, I hope that you will take time this week to give thanks for those who have nurtured you, who have nurtured your family, and have nurtured your community.  Make a list and give thanks for them, and if you are not already doing it, seek to live those attributes that you admire in them.  I’m giving a sample list for me today.  The first saint in today’s list (and in every list that I will ever produce) is my mother Mary Armour Stroupe.  I’m so grateful that Wipf and Stock has agreed to publish my memoir on her and me – it should come out sometime next year.  It’s tentative title is “Mother and Me: A Southern Story of Agency, Race and Gender.”

    Mother was born in Byhalia, Mississippi in 1919 and was valedictorian of her high school class.  She had hoped to go to college, but her family had no money for it, especially in the grips of the Great Depression.  She scraped up enough money to go to beauty school (now cosmetology school), and she worked in that profession until her retirement in 1986.  During the last 10 years of her work life, she was the lead instructor at the school of cosmetology at Phillips County Community College.  There she worked with many women – and a few men – seeking to become cosmetologists, helping them to navigate that journey but also assisting them on managing their life journeys.  But, for me, her sainthood lies in her raising me in a patriarchal world as a single, working mother after my father abandoned her and me.  She dedicated so much energy and time and love to me, and I will ever be grateful to her for all the gifts that she shared with me.  She died on October 28, 2004.

The second person on my list is the other woman who helped to raise me in the patriarchal world, my great-great aunt, Bernice Higgins.  My mother and I moved in with her in her smaller house in Helena, Arkansas, in 1947, when I was a year old.  “Gran,” as I called her, was my great-grandmother’s sister, and she was a formidable force in our lives until her death in 1959.  For all intents and purposes, she was a grandmother for me. She was born in 1880 in Cayce, Mississippi, and she often regaled me with tales from her mother, Mrs. Brown, about Civil War days.  She cooked supper for us on weeknights, and she was there at home for me when I came home from school.  She was a conservative Presbyterian and sometimes refused to take the Lord’s Supper (served 4 times a year in my childhood church) because she did not think that she had lived a life worthy of the sacrament that quarter.  I was sitting with her at the breakfast table when she died of a thundering heart attack on May 20 at age 79.  

The third saint for me this year is an African-American Oakhurst member named James Jefferson, part of the foundational Jefferson family at Oakhurst – last year I featured his sister Azzie Preston.  “Jeff,” as he was called, was a retired Air Force veteran and worked at Lockheed.  Though he was conservative, he was a great leader for us as we sought to make the transition from a white church with Black members to a multicultural church, where power was shared.  He was elected as an elder on the Session (our governing body), and he helped us to navigate tricky waters.  We brought a recommendation to the Session in 1989 that we change the color of the stained glass Jesus from white to Black, and he was a strong supporter of that. We brought a recommendation in 1990 to the Session about openly welcoming LGBTQ+ members, and I was afraid of a difficult discussion ahead because the culture had not yet changed on this issue.  Jeff spoke up first and said: “I just think that we should welcome anyone whom God sends to us, no matter what their classification is.  We’re in the saving business, not the judging business.”  His statement ended the discussion, and we began to advertise that we welcomed all people, including LGBTQ+ people.  Unfortunately for all of us, Jeff died of a rare blood disease in 1991, but he left his mark, including the fact the Fellowship Hall at Oakhurst is named after him.  

So, it’s All Saints Week, All Hallows Eve, and Day of the Dead.  Find time this week to name and remember those saints who have helped to give you life and vision.