This I Believe

“I believe in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”

I’m a pastor. I’ve been ordained for twenty years in the Presbyterian Church USA. My colleagues and I are expected to believe this snippet from the Apostles’ Creed. And I do: not because of anything I have learned from seminary or important theologians, but because of what I have learned from two wonderful women.

Aunt Sissie was the life of the party. Her biscuits were beyond compare. She had a laugh that could fill the room. When she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she made the choice not to try any heroic treatments, given the prognosis. She chose to be as fully present as possible during her last days with her family. One day towards the end, she began to struggle – so much so that she needed to be restrained. “Something’s happened to Jack,” she said and began to cry.

Jack was my father, her younger brother. He lost his left arm in World War Two, and died about fifteen years before Aunt Sissie. Seeing the two of them together at the kitchen table was a sight to behold. He was the apple of her eye.

“Something’s happened to Jack,” she kept saying. Then, all of a sudden, she stopped fighting and began to beam peacefully, smiling that infectious smile of hers. “Oh,” she said, “He’s okay. I see him. He has both arms, and it’s beautiful.”

I believe in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Aunt Lucy was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia. As did her older sister, she too made the conscious decision not to pursue any treatment beyond hospice care. A speech impediment early in life had caused Lucy to be self-conscious and loath to speak in public, even though she had worked through it long ago. She had a heart of gold, could cook like a fiend, and would do anything for anyone – except speak in front of people.

One night my cousin Chris had finally dozed off after a rough time of trying to keep Lucy in bed. Suddenly Chris was awakened by a confident, bold voice: “Ladies and gentlemen!” She sprung up: it was her mother, standing at the end of the bed, posturing and gesturing like an orator, addressing a crowd. “Thank you for being here tonight. I have been diagnosed with leukemia, and I don’t have much longer to live…” She continued on and after a while she said modestly, “Oh, thank you, no applause please…” Chris observed her presentation for quite awhile.

The next morning over coffee, Chris asked her mom if she remembered getting up in the middle of the night to give a speech. “Oh yes,” Lucy emphatically replied. “So who were you talking to, Mom?” “I was talking to The Perfect People.” The Perfect People had gathered in Wimberley, Texas to cheer Lucy on.

I believe in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

Finding Eudora

My mother warned me this would happen.

When you get a liberal arts degree, you're just not satisfied with anything. You are trained to keep your fingers in several pies. And once you graduate, you never get to do anything like normal people again.

When I was at Austin College, I fell in love with southern literature in general, and James Dickey and William Faulkner in particular. I even got to meet James Dickey my senior year. Four or five years after graduation, I went to see a friend in Charleston SC and could NOT get that close to Faulkner's home in Oxford, MS without stopping to pay homage. If you've ever been there, you know that the curator looks exactly like Faulkner, down to the bottle glasses, shock of hair, and salt-and pepper mustache. As I left, I told him I imagined he must have the most fun job in the world. In a thick (and perhaps practiced) southern drawl, he replied "I consider it a privilege of which I never tire." I've been possessed by the deep south ever since.

The year before I got married, my best friend and I decided to set out for what we called our "Southern Literature and Kitsch" vacation. We would stop in Jackson MS to learn more about Eudora Welty, return to Oxford to wave at Faulkner again, and wind up in Memphis at Graceland. (that was the kitsch) Memphis is a post in itself; for now, let me tell you about Miss Eudora.

Somehow I had fallen in love with southern lit without reading anything by Miss Eudora. My roommate and best friend, the German major, adored her writing. (a liberal arts education leaves room for German majors to read southern lit). When we decided to include her on the tour, I studied up on her.

Miss Eudora was still alive at the time, and somewhere along the way I read that if one had the gumption to come to Jackson and knock on her door, she would invite them in for tea. I thought, Perfect! Pam was appalled. How could you just go up and knock on Miss Eudora's door without an invitation? I suggested that "Miss Manners" write her, then, and ask if we could come calling. Fully expecting no reply, she gave it a shot.

A couple of weeks before we left, Pam got quite a surprise in the mail. Miss Eudora wrote: "I'm sorry I will not be able to receive you and your friend when you come to Jackson. I am writing you from the hospital, where I have just had back surgery. I hope your visit is lovely." We were squealing like teenagers - a handwritten letter from Eudora Welty! To a stranger! While lying flat on her back in the hospital! We were hooked.

Jackson was our first stop on the trip. After we'd gotten the letter, we determined that at the very least we would like to go by and see where she lived (we contemplated visiting her in the hospital, but not even liberal arts majors are that brash). You cannot imagine how guarded almost everyone in town behaved on behalf of their favorite daughter. The waitress and hostess at her favorite restaurant just had no idea where she might live. The women working at the Colonial Dames mansion didn't have a clue. We drove around town looking for any hint, and finally - aha! The Eudora Welty Public Library.

We whizzed into a parking spot, went straight to the front desk, eyes like silver dollars, and asked the librarian if she could tell us where Miss Eudora lived. There was a pregnant pause. "Let me get the Library Director for you." We were almost giddy.

When the director appeared light years later, we fell over each other to tell our story and seek his help in finding her home. "I'm sorry, ladies, I just can't help you." Puh-LEEZE, we begged! We've come this far - we've gotten this close - we had a letter from her - we're not going to hurt anything... no dice. We tried again. Finally he said, "Well, I can't give you her address, but if you'd like to see a picture of her house there's one over there on the wall." "THANK YOU!"

We raced over to see the oil portrait of her home. We set out to memorize all the details, plotting our path, certain that if we drove around Jackson long enough we'd recognize it: "Okay. Red brick. Two story. Tudor." As we were searing the image onto our brains, the director came over and said quietly, "If you turn down (this certain) Street, you'll see a house which looks very much like this one." "THANK YOU! THANK YOU!" We forgot to whisper while we were clicking our heels. He looked at us with wonder and said, "Who ARE you?"

Who are we? Liberal arts majors. And yes, we found the house.

Did you help someone today?

Ever since our children started school, Paul started up this daily mantra with them as they were getting out of the car: "Be sure and help somebody today." We got a lot of quizzical looks for awhile there, but after the first year it began to sink in.

"Did you help somebody today?" "Yes, somebody was picking on Chad and I went over to be his friend." "Yes, I picked up the book that Mrs. Foster dropped." Every time we got some kind of response, it felt like a moral victory.

Paul is in India on business right now, so I've been single parenting and have not remembered to ask The Question every day. Survival has been the goal.

Last week one night, we were IM'ing with Paul. Alex was the one who brought it up: "Daddy, did you help somebody today?" There was a pause, then Paul wrote back, "Well, I hope I did in the classes I'm teaching here." Then he wrote, "Did YOU help somebody today?" Alex and Meredith both thought for a minute and said, "Well, no." So Paul typed back, "Did anybody help YOU today?" Again, they were at a loss for an answer. So Paul started in with the litany:
Did anybody take you to school this morning?
Did anybody clean the bathrooms at your school?
Did anybody grow the food you ate today?
Did anybody teach you anything?
You get the idea....

It's been a good lesson for all of us: we have something for which to be grateful every day. Hopefully, each of us has helped someone; for sure, many someones have helped us. Most of us reading this are well out of elementary school. But the questions remain: Did you help someone today? Did someone help you today? Be sure to say thank you.

The Man from Samarkand

We didn't see a lot of elegance in the former Soviet Union thirty years ago. And the fact that we were there in January didn't make it any lovelier. Old women shoveled snow off the Moscow streets. Our hotel was less than posh. There were lines of people waiting to get into the "departments" of the GUM Department Store, lines to select from a very limited supply of pots or belts or cheese, and lines to check out.

Not much elegance - until you entered the subway. The Metro stations in Moscow were gorgeous: marble floors polished to a shine, huge ornate crystal chandeliers - and all of that for about five kopecs a ride (about a dime). If it weren't for the constant hum of the trains, the smell of diesel, and the squeaks and honks as the cars rolled to a stop, you'd think you were about to enter a great concert hall. The trains are deep underground, so the long, steep escalator ride allowed time for one to take in the ambiance of the station.

One night Steven and I found ourselves coming back up the escalator, marveling at the spotless grandeur of the Metro station as we headed back towards the hotel. We noticed a man riding a couple of steps above us. He seemed about half as tall as either of us, even with the tall fur hat he was wearing. His skin was the color of a walnut husk, and just about as furrowed with lines. And he kept staring at me - almost leering, it felt.

Shortly he spoke to us in broken English. He looked at me straight in the eyes and told me what beautiful teeth I had. Now, I've heard some lines in my time; few have involved dentistry. But when he said this to me, he smiled - and I saw exactly why he might admire my teeth. His were yellowed and snaggled and in need of repair. I stood a little closer to my friend.

He told us that he hailed from Samarkand. Somehow he was able to guess that we did not; we must be from the States. "Ah," he said, "you must be millionaires." What a card! I don't know about my classmates, but I was there because of the benevolence of Austin College's financial aid office. He had no way of knowing what a precarious financial tightrope I maneuvered in those days. But he insisted - "Everyone in the United States is a millionaire." (Now I know he was right. In comparison with most of the world, each of us is wealthy beyond measure.)

"I want you to go home and talk to the other millionaires," he said, "and tell them to buy up all the guns." This was after the end of Vietnam, and just days before Jimmy Carter's inauguration; we self-centered college juniors didn't exactly have world peace in the front of our minds. We agreed to do so, laughing nervously, hoping against hope that the long slow escalator would somehow suddenly, magically, catapult us to our destination. Then the man from Samarkand reached in his pocket and pulled out his wallet. "I want to give you something."

"For the girl with the beautiful teeth," he said. It was a postcard, an artist's rendering of a red rose on a moss green background. On the back were words in faded Cyrillic lettering. If they'd made hand sanitizer in those days, I probably would have whipped it out about then. I planned to take the card to humor him, thinking I'd ditch it later as soon as I could.

"I was one of six brothers," he told us. "All five of my brothers were killed in World War Two. Now it is just me, and I am alone. This postcard is a New Year's greeting from my only son. He sent it to me from Germany, where he is in the military now. I wonder whether I will ever see him again." Steven and I became uncharacteristically quiet. "Go home and find the millionaires, and tell them to buy up all the guns." This time when we said we would, we meant it.

I'm a little longer in the tooth these days, but I still have that postcard. If you happen to be a millionaire, or if you happen to know any, well, I made this promise...

It's not about the house

It seems to me that a sense of place, "where we are," and "where we came from," is a huge part of who we are and why we're the way that we are. Our earliest settings serve as a frame of reference for the millions of other settings in which we will find ourselves our whole life long.

I'm one of the few people I know who grew up in the same house - 1611 Driftwood Drive in Oak Cliff, Texas (actually in Dallas, but "Oak Cliff" is an important part of the location). I wasn't born in that house, but I got there as fast as I could! Mom and Dad bought it when I was six months old, and we didn't sell it for forty-plus years, after Mom's death. If the walls could talk!

I still remember lots of the physical details about the house - it was white brick with pink trim (at least until the last 10 years or so). In the best 50's tradition, the main bathroom was painted pink, and black and white tiles covered the floor and halfway up the walls. The kitchen was painted yellow, with wooden cabinets covered in shellac and RED FORMICA counters. (I TOLD you it was 50's). Aunt Sissie said the house always smelled like fresh coffee.

But the den was my favorite room. It was paneled in knotty pine, top to bottom - I didn't think about it feeling like a cabin at the time, but it did. It felt snug and comfortable. The room was lit by a wagon wheel-type chandelier (I am not making this up), and there was this great picture of a train rolling off into the sunset - the main thing the viewer sees is the red caboose. How many times I rode that train somewhere in my mind! When it was cold enough, we lit a fire in the fireplace - and that was the best time of all; the only better time was when Santa left stockings that were so heavy they had to be placed on the hearth.

I've never seen a house as empty as the day my sister and I took one last walkthrough before we closed on the sale. I wasn't sure I'd be able to breathe. That was the day I discovered that a house is only a shell for the things that go on inside of it. Instead of being as grief-stricken as I expected to be, saying goodbye to that formative place after 40 or so years, I found myself saying thanks to Mom and Dad for all the gifts they gave my sisters and me. A great place to grow up, for sure, but so much more.

They say that when you dream of a house, you're dreaming about yourself, and the things that go on inside of you. I can't count the number of times that I've dreamed about 1611 Driftwood over the years, probably as I worked out things about myself in the realm of dreams. Even after Paul and I got married, Driftwood was the "dream house" of choice. But funny - when we became parents, the house of dreams became the one where we lived. A sense of place indeed.

So how did this place of red formica kitchens and pink-and-black bathrooms shape me? At the very least, it gave me a sense of rootedness. I have no question "where I came from." I learned that I had more "neighbors" than the ones next door, the Monks on one side and the Crawfords on the other. If I wanted to be with friends, all I had to do was cross the street or go down a couple of doors. If I wanted to be alone, the woods of Lower Kiest Park began at the end of the street. My parents loved me enough to let me decorate my bedroom door, top to bottom, with stickers and posters - and to wait to refinish it until I went to college! I learned that we could grieve, laugh, fight, study, and play - sometimes together, sometimes alone - and still be family. And I learned that when I talk about home, as much as I loved it, it's not about the house.