"A SONG OF MYSELF"

 “A SONG OF MYSELF”

Today is my 77th birthday, having been born in the Methodist Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, which was the capital of eastern Arkansas and northern Mississippi at that time. I was born to Mary Elizabeth Armour Stroupe and Gibson Preston Stroupe.  Soon, she would be a single, working mom, raising me in a patriarchal world.  So, on this day, I am grateful for my life and for my mother, who persevered in raising me after my father abandoned our family.  I am grateful to Caroline, who has put up with me almost 50 years now, and to David and Susan, who have had to endure my jokes all of their lives!

I also give thanks that Wipf and Stock Publishing Company has agreed to publish my memoir on my mother and me, in her raising me as a single working mom in a man’s world.  Wipf and Stock is the same company who published my book of sermons “Deeper Waters” in 2017.  I am grateful also to Collin Cornell who helped facilitate “Deeper Waters” and is helping on this manuscript, which I hope will be ready to publish in 2024.  I also want to thank John Blake, who pushed me to think about and to write this book.  I have two tentative titles for it: “Mother and Me: A Southern Story of Agency, Race, and Gender,” or “A Single Mom in a Man’s World: A Southern Story of Agency, Race, and Gender.”  Let me know which title sounds best to you.

I’m also starting work on another book ( my 7th!).  Caroline has finally agreed to work with me on writing a manuscript on our pioneering ministry as a clergy couple.  We were the first clergy couple to work in a local church in the former PCUS Southern Presbyterian Church.  I’m just starting out on it, but the tentative title is “Pioneers and Partners in Ministry”.  Let me know your thoughts on that too.  And, if you have any stories or insights on our ministry as a clergy couple or individually, share them with us as we build this manuscript.  

I’m grateful to our longtime friend and colleague Inez Giles, who has given me a birthday party every year (except the Covid year of 2020) since 1996, when I turned 50.  We used to do the Electric Slide at my birthday party, but lately we have been subbing Stevie Wonder’s version of “Happy Birthday.”  Last year in my birthday blog , I shared part of a Walt Whitman poem, “Song of Myself,” which I still love as the name of one’s birthday.  This year I want to share the familiar but ever powerful poem “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver.

“Wild Geese”

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees 

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mind.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees, 

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

The world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Mary Oliver, “Dream Work,” 1986