"GREAT TREES SOMETIMES FALL"

    In times like these, with the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (among many giants who have left us this year - Gay Wilmore, John Prine, Joseph Lowery, CT Vivian, John Lewis, and now the notorious RBG), I think that the only words I can say are from a powerful poem from Maya Angelou that I encountered when John Lewis died, so here it is.

"WHEN GREAT TREES FALL" by MAYA ANGELOU

When great trees fall, 

rocks on distant hills shudder, 

lions hunker down 

in tall grasses,

and even elephants lumber after safety.

When great trees fall in forests,

small things recoil into silence,

their senses

eroded beyond repair.

When great souls die,

the air around us becomes

light, rare, sterile.

We breathe, briefly.

Our eyes, briefly,

see with a hurtful clarity.

Our memory, suddenly sharpened,

examines,

gnaws on kind words, unsaid,

promised walks never taken.

Great souls die and 

our reality, bound to

them, takes leave of us.

Our souls, dependent upon their nurture,

now shrink, wizened.

Our minds, formed 

and informed by their radiance,

fall away.

We are not so much maddened

as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of 

dark, cold caves.

And, when great souls die,

after a period peace blooms,

slowly and always

irregularly.  Spaces fill

with a kind of

soothing electric vibration.

Our senses, restored, never

to be the same, whisper to us.

They existed.  They existed.

We can be. Be and be

better. For they existed. 

“MES NACIONAL DE LA HEFRENCIA LATINX/HISPANA”

 “MES NACIONAL DE LA HEFRENCIA LATINX/HISPANA”

 

             This week begins the month of celebrating the heritage of the diaspora of people from Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean, who are now in the USA.  Some have been here for centuries, predating the Anglo arrival, some arrived as recently as today.  The month is sandwiched between famous battles for independence by Latinx or Hispanic peoples from European colonial powers, and the dates are September 15-October 15. 

 

            The recognition began under President Johnson and was originally called Hispanic Heritage Week.  It has expanded into a month, and in line with the arbitrary nature of the American system of race, it is ever evolving.  “Hispanic” was the earliest term because it is a word derived from the Latin word for the Iberian Peninsula of Spain and Portugal (Hispana).  

 

            The word “Hispanic” began to fall out of favor, however, because it does not cover all the language groups in the brown Americas.  “Latino” has begun to develop as an alternative, and it is a strange term because no one speaks Latin in the brown Americas except priests and some scholars.  Vice-Presidential candidate Dan Quayle infamously noted that he would have to learn “Latin” before he visited Latin America.  Why did a word referring to a “dead” language from Italy become the definer for people from the brown Americas?  Because Latin is the basis for what were called the “Romance” languages when I was growing up:  Spanish, Portuguese, and French, which became the dominant European languages in the brown Americas.  “Latinx” has begun to replace the masculine “Latino” as a word of choice to include all  people. 

 

            Whether one prefers “Hispanic” or “Latino” or “Latina” or “Latinx,” all of them still define people from the brown Americas by the history of the European domination of the region in the colonial era.  This crunching of experience is further squeezed by the American system of race, which demands to know who should be classified as “white” and who should not.  This demand, born out of the struggle between slavery and equality in American history, means that everyone must be assigned their place in the system of race, obliterating cultural and language differences, so that those classified as “white” may know where to assign the goodies of American racial capitalism.  One of the great things about “MES NACIONAL DE LA HEFRENCIA LATINX/HISPANA” is that we hope that it will lead to peoples of the Americas helping to break down the oppressive system of race.  We will be hoping and looking for more accurate and just terms and descriptions to emerge.

 

            I got my first real insight into this system of classifying brown Americans in 1994 when I was a commissioner to our denomination’s annual General Assembly in Wichita.  I was assigned to the deadening (but really Presbyterian) Committee on Assembly Rules and Procedures.  For the most part, it was a deadening time, but we all perked up when a light-skinned woman commissioner came to meet with us.  She was an elder in her Hispanic church in Texas, and she came to ask us to consider changing the wording on the form which churches use annually to report the racial composition of their membership.  At that time the form had these categories:  “White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American.”  She wanted to divide the “Hispanic” category into two sub-groups: “Hispanic-white” and “Hispanic-black.” 

 

Few of us had heard of this at that time, and we asked her why her church was recommending this.  She was unusually frank with us about race, which was then (and still is) highly unusually.  She noted her light skin, and she indicated that most of the Hispanic members in her church looked like her.  They had perceived how the system of race works in America: “white is right; black get back; brown stand down.”  So, she wanted to keep her Hispanic heritage but also receive the goodies of being classified as “white.”  Some of us appreciated her candor; some of us were shocked (and offended) at it.  A few of us argued to make the change because it would help to expose the hypocrisy of race in America, but the majority opposed the change precisely for the same reason:  though they never voiced it, they simply did not want to admit that the dynamics of race worked in that way. 

 

Almost thirty years later, we know that it does indeed work that way, and the advocate who met with us has prevailed, with all kinds of permutations evolving out of the attempt to lump all brown peoples of the Americas into one category.  The “white” fear of the growing presence of “brown” people in the United States  is one of the foundations of the Presidency of Donald Trump.  Joining with the historical white fear and dread and exploitation of those classified as “black,” we face a fundamental divide in November.  May “MES NACIONAL DE LA HEFRENCIA LATINX/HISPANA” help us move towards the inclusion of all in a different system of the classification and celebrations of all cultures and all people.

 

"CELEBRATING SUSAN"

CELEBRATING SUSAN”

 

            This week brings our daughter Susan’s birthday, and I want to give thanks for her and for her life and witness and power in our lives and in the lives of so many.  So, today’s blog is dedicated to her!  She was born in Nashville, and she was ready to come out of Caroline’s womb.  Two hours after we arrived at Vanderbilt Hospital’s birthing room, Caroline said that she did not think that she could birth this baby without some drugs.  I went to get the nurse, and the nurse looked at the situation and said “No wonder you’re in distress – the head is crowning – hold on, Dr. Betty Neff wants to be here for this first birth in her solo practice!”  Somehow, Caroline held on, and out came baby Susan!

 

            We moved to Oakhurst Church and Decatur when Susan was six months old, so Decatur was her home until she left for college.  She was very shy as a young girl, and indeed the rumor spread in the church that she had some sort of impediment because she would not talk at church.  Her big brother, David, was incredulous and defended her, saying “She can talk – she talks all the time at home!”  Her verbal debut at the church came while Dr. Lawrence Bottoms and I were officiating at the wedding of Christine Johnson and Charlie Callier – she called out from the pew: “Da-da, Da-da!”  When people turned and looked at her, Caroline replied:  “Well, at least you know that she can talk!”

 

            It was perhaps the beginning of her drama career, which she continued to develop.  In the first grade, she was given the lead part of a young granddaughter in the elementary school play, and she had many lines to memorize.  We went to her wonderful teacher, Debbie Miller and expressed our concern for someone so young having so much to learn.  Ms. Miller replied:  “Are you kidding?  She not only has her own part down – she has memorized the entire play, everyone’s part – she gives cues to her fellow actors!”  So began her directorial career also.

 

            She joined Oakhurst as a member and became part of the youth group, and she began to move theatrically during one of our famous Christmas pageants.   Under Caroline’s leadership, we had begun to develop themes for the Advent season.  The theme that year was “Legends of Christmas,” and we had emphasized both plants and animals involved in the tradition.  Susan’s middle school group was asked to portray the plants, which they dutifully did.  After the pageant, Susan complained that having to act as a plant was boring.  Our reply was that if she thought that this year’s pageant was boring, maybe she and the youth should write the one for the next year.  She said:  “That sounds fine,” and it began a 25 year tradition of the youth writing and producing the Christmas pageant every year. 

 

            David went off to college after her first year in high school, and she thought that it would be great to get a bigger room and to have her big brother out of her hair for awhile.  What she didn’t reckon with was the fact that now both parents would be focusing on her rather than on her and David.  So, she got her driver’s license as soon as she could, and from then on, we would have “Susan sightings” at our house.  But, she used her time so wisely and creatively – with Lauren Gunderson, she co-founded “Life Is Sacred Campaign” seeking to limit the accessibility to guns.  For this work, they won the Metro Christian Council’s  Andrew Young Award for Faith and Public Policy and got to meet Andy Young himself.   By the time that she graduated from Decatur High, she won the AJC Cup, awarded to the most outstanding senior in each high school in the metro area.

 

            She received many scholarships for college, and we tried to get her to go to my alma mater Rhodes or to Guilford.  But, she had had enough of the South (it is always with us and in us) with its overt racism and sexism and general repressive approach to life.  She headed up to cold Minnesota for Macalester College, where she learned theater in a deep and powerful way and saw more snow in her four years there than she will probably see for the rest of her life!  But, she blossomed into a great human being!

 

            Since then, she has become our teacher on many levels.  She has vastly expanded our limited theatrical horizon, including her work in Americorps in Albuquerque where she was a drama teacher for developmentally disabled adults.  After getting her MFA in theater at Towson, she has settled in Baltimore, where she is a partner in an immersive theater company called “Submersive Productions.”  As an artist in America, she has to work other jobs to support herself, but fortunately she has found work in theater-related areas, teaching part-time in various colleges and working with drama teachers in high schools and middle schools.  She also joined Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church, and to no one’s surprise, she is now chairing their worship committee, as they seek more inclusive and welcoming worship for people of all cultures and backgrounds.  She sings in their choir too!

 

            I could obviously go on and on about our great daughter, but for now, it’s “Thank you, Susan,” and “Happy Birthday!”  You are such a powerful gift to us and to so many others!