"A SONG OF MYSELF"

 “A SONG OF MYSELF”

This Wednesday will be my 78th birthday – that is really hard to believe.  I am borrowing the title from Walt Whitman’s great poem and trying to celebrate myself in a gloomy time.  As we enter the Thanksgiving season and anticipate Advent and Christmas, I’m also mindful of the crap that is still to come from Donald Trump’s re-election as President.  I anticipate some really troubling actions and times, but perhaps we will all be called out to be witnesses against the horrific time that is coming.

I am grateful to have my latest book published this summer:  “She Made A Way:  Mother and Me in a Deep South World.’’ It has gotten good reviews and comments, so plan to get your copy – contact me or your local bookstore, or the publisher Wipf and Stock, or Thriftbooks or bookshop,org.  No Amazon orders, please, although it is available there too.

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 “Better Togther: 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 celebrated this past Saturday with  the Electric Slide at the party, and we sang Stevie Wonder’s version of “Happy Birthday.”  Many stories were shared, and I’ll share one of them here.  Ann Starks, an African-American member who was at Oakhurst before Caroline and I arrived there in 1983, told a story about my interaction with her adult nephew, David.  David has had many health challenges but has fought through them bravely, and I have been fortunate (through Ann) to accompany him through many of them. On one such occasion, I was visiting him in a rehab center, and he needed to return to the hospital.  As they were putting David into the ambulance, I climbed up into the van to have a prayer with him.  Later on, the attendants asked him: “Who was that short, little white man who got up into the ambulance with you?”  David responded:  “He’s not a little white man – he’s my pastor!”

And, of course, there was dancing, and I once again was voted best dancer, mainly because Inez’s daughter Angela came out on the dance floor to motivate me – she and I won the dance contest a couple of decades ago when Guyen Mata was singing.  I must admit, however, that Inez’s great-grandson Gabe (4 years old) gave me a run for the award.  

This is Thanksgiving week, and I hope that you will take time to give thanks for yourself.  We face difficult times ahead, but during this respite period, take time to sing a song of yourself.   This year I want to close with the familiar but ever powerful poem “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver.

Wild Geese | Mary Oliver

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 mine.

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.