Month: December 2021

I always become pensive in the days before Christmas. In fact, my pondering really begins on my birthday in November and continues through the Thanksgiving holiday and all the way into Christmas Day. It is a time during which I look back on the year that is coming to a close and forward to the dawn of a brand new twelve month cycle in which to do a bit better in the art of living. I mostly think about how amazing it is that even thousands of years later we continue to celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the humble son of a carpenter who became perhaps the most masterful teacher in the art of living that the world has ever known. 

Of course there are many religions in this world and many people who do believe in such things, so the annual holiday has morphed into an extravaganza of feasting and gift giving that does not always include mention of the reason that the season first appeared. I have to say that while Christ is very much part of my Christmas, I have no trouble respecting the beliefs of others. I have never been one to insist that everyone agree with my thoughts, but I am always willing to share my views with anyone who wants to take the time to hear or read what I have to say. My relationship with Jesus is quite personal and I do not think that it requires undue proselytizing or judgement on my part to be faithful. 

I have a friend whose son was murdered last summer. He has spent each day since then attempting to piece together some kind of explanation for why this tragedy happened to him. He wanted to know how he was supposed to think, to act, to believe. He ultimately came to the profound conclusion that we all too often make God more like a god, a clerk who randomly and sometimes unfairly doles out retribution and favors much like the all too human-like gods of the Greeks. He noted that God is not petty, nor does He love one of us more than another simply because we say prayers or show up at church services. 

I have always believed that Jesus was sent to the world to show us how we should strive to be. When I read about Him and His word I find love, empathy and compassion in every story. I find a God who is understanding and forgiving. His parables and stories honor prodigal sons, tax collectors, and a good Samaritan. These were people who would have been disliked or even detested by the people of Jesus’ time. By making them beloved in His stories the message is very clear to me. Our task is to be open and loving to all people. Jesus demonstrated again and again that self-righteousness was not the way, the truth and the light that he wanted us to accept. 

I can think of no philosophy more beautiful than the one that Jesus taught us. Sadly, as is often the case with humans we have often times distorted His words and His commands to suit our own narrower views. Because we are fallible we get things twisted in our minds. We judge when we should simply love. We avert our eyes from suffering and turn our backs on people we do not understand. Jesus embraced the sick, the fallen, the hated. We too often forget that his apostles were a rather rag tag group. His friend Mary Magdalene was a woman who had been shunned by the society of the time. 

Not once did Jesus tell us to judge who is a sinner among us and yet we do such things all of the time. He never suggested that we should confine our love to only those who agree with His way of living. In fact, He was ever aware that we will falter and He adamantly told us that He will always be willing to forgive our transgressions if we are willing to sincerely profess our contrition. I suppose this is what I love most about His beautiful way of looking at life. He taught us that there is indeed redemption for anyone who honestly seeks it. 

For me, Christmas is love. It is forgiveness and compassion. That tiny baby born in the humblest of circumstances would one day tells us that the souls living under our bridges are as important as those living in the mansions of power. He would chastise the hypocritical canons of religion that would place rituals over human decency. He would minister to the poor as though telling us that our duty lies beyond the comfort of our homes. It is out into a world of suffering that we must look. The refugees shivering in the freezing forests of Europe or at the southern border of our country are His sheep and He want us to continue the duties of caring for them just as a loving shepherd would do. 

Love was born at Christmas time. The word from this great prophet has endured through the centuries, but we know that we have time and again been derelict in following what He had to say to the fullest extent of our abilities. This Christmas let’s follow His lead and open our arms to all people, even the ones we do not understand. Let us demonstrate a willingness to give of our time, our talent, and our treasure to anyone in need. Let us spread kindness and good cheer wherever we go. 

I’ve done a great deal of research into my ancestry and it appears that nobody in my family tree ever owned a slave. It might be argued that they were too poor to afford the possession of another human being, but I would like to believe that they somehow understood that owning another person was and has always been wrong. As far back as the times when slavery began in the American colonies there were individuals who spoke out against the practice. In the founding of our country there were signers of the Declaration of Independence who argued for freeing all slaves, but lost that enlightened view to compromise. Perhaps the birth of this country would never have happened without placating the desires of the slave holding colonies, but it certainly would have been a far less hypocritical way of declaring that all men are created equal. 

The words of our founding documents are lyrical and give the promise of a society that values all people, but the actual rules in the  original Constitution left out considerable portions of the population. Among many of the Founding Fathers there was a silent belief that given time the abomination of slavery would one day be abolished. Sadly they would have been horrified that it took so long to happen and that the process of reaching that moment would lead to a brutal civil war. 

We all know that even after the slaves were emancipated by force of law, there were those who were still embittered and filled with racist beliefs. Angered by their defeat in the Civil War, they took out their rage on Black citizens with Jim Crow laws that enshrined segregation and  unreasonable voting restrictions, not to mention often unjust treatment in employment and the courts. It was not until the 1960’s almost two hundred years from the signing of the Declaration of Independence that civil right legislation attempted to finally address the issues. While it seemed for a time that our country was finally headed in the right direction there is still much to do. The fight for civil rights should never end until every person in America genuinely feels equal with regard to justice and voting rights and educational opportunities.

Someone asked me recently who I thought was the most important leader of civil rights in our country’s history. I realized that just as the history of moving toward equality is ongoing, so too has the leadership been handed down from one era to another. Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton were officers in anti-slave societies in their respective states. Such leadership and influence lead many of the northern states to abolish slavery early in the history of the nation. Sojourner Truth, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, John Brown, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucretia Mott, and David Walker were all devoted to abolition, sometimes risking their own lives to free slaves. Each of their stories is one of astounding courage and dedication to the cause, but it would ultimately come to Abraham Lincoln to herald the final decree to break the chains of slavery. The thousands of Union soldiers fought not only to save our union, but ultimately made it possible to end the despicable practice that had plague the country for far too long. 

Everyone has heard of Martin Luther King, Jr. and he is in fact one of my most cherished heroes, but he could not have won the fight for freedom without the efforts of thousands of souls whose work is overlooked or unknown. Rosa Parks refused to lose her seat on a Montgomery bus, but across the south Black citizens boycotted buses in a combined effort to bring attention to their plight. John Lewis rode with the Freedom Riders when he was still a very young man. Ruby Bridges bravely agree to become one of the first to integrate a public school in the south. James Farmer, A. Phillip Randolph, Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young were shapers of the Civil Rights Movement by planning sit-ins, marches and working for legislation. Today there is a new generation of people from many different races fighting to maintain fairness and equality for all. 

To simply name the greatest of all time would be to slight the efforts of even nameless individuals who put their safety on the line for the sake of elevating our country to a fairer and more even handed democracy. To claim that we have already reached the plateau of where we need to go would be naive. The struggle continues to eliminate the abominable treatment of anyone anywhere in America. Heroes devoted to the cause are emerging everyday. 

To say that I grew up in a protective bubble would be an understatement. After my father died when I was eight years old, my mother had to find a place for us to live. Under the guidance of my dear sweet Uncle Jack she located a small but quite nice home in a neighborhood in southeast Houston known as Overbrook. At the center of that little subdivision was a Catholic church and a school that provided education through the eighth grade. Later a Catholic high school would be added to the mix. The church and schools would become the main focus of my youth as I grew from a child into a seventeen year old heading of to college. 

The scope of my world was quite small indeed, guided by a routine that included daily sessions in the classroom, Sunday mornings at church and Friday night visits to my grandmother’s house. On Saturdays we cleaned the house, did the laundry and went to the grocery store. Little varied from one week to the next and it felt quite safe and secure just as my mother hoped it would be. Nonetheless through the influence most especially of my teachers, I found myself longing to know more about the realities of the world. So when I attended the University of Houston I began to realize just how little I actually understood about people and perhaps even myself. 

I admittedly became a bit of a rebel, at least in my thoughts. I began to question just about everything. When my mother had her first psychotic break and the responsibility of her care fell to me, I made a quantum leap into the realities of the world. I clearly saw that everything that I had always believed required far more complex thinking than the simplicity of the life I had once lived. My horizons widened and I felt a feverish need to break away from the narrowness of my experiences. 

I married quite young which was an act of rebellion in its own right. Luckily that decision proved to be one of the best I ever made as I realized that in my husband I had truly found a soulmate. Together we began to navigate the adult world, all the while growing together through the incredible challenges of our twenties that included not just caring for my mom when her mental illness returned again and again, but also enduring a frightening health scare for my husband that threatened his life. I suppose that I was a twenty something going on fifty after those times.

Along the way we lived in an apartment in Pasadena, Texas, a blue collar town known for a somewhat conservative bent. It was there that I encountered people who were totally unlike those I had known in my school days. Most of them were only educated in the basics, non-readers who escaped from high school as soon as it was possible. Nonetheless I soon enough learned that they were well educated in how to survive. Most of them possessed an uncanny common sense and trade skills that baffled me. They worked with their hands and were unafraid of getting dirty. The men in particular often came home from work with grease on their faces and dirt on their clothes. They were honest, forthright folk who enjoyed life and I found that I really liked them. 

There was one woman, however, whom I avoided. She seemed a bit too brash for my taste.  I don’t ever recall seeing her wearing shoes and her bare feet were often in dire need of a pedicure. More often than not, she paraded through the apartment complex with tight tops that exposed too much of her breasts. All the while a cigarette dangled from her lips as she openly used the foulest language that my virgin ears had ever heard. Without ever actually speaking to her I had decided that I did not like her. 

Then came the day that I witnessed spousal abuse up close and personal. A group of us had been sitting in the courtyard talking and having a good time when we heard screams from a nearby apartment. Through the open window we heard the husband threatening to kill his wife while their children were crying for help. We saw him punching his helpless victim until she was down on the floor. We sat watching the scene unfold in frozen silence, not knowing what to do. There were no cell phones back then so nobody thought to call 911. It was an horrific situation that stunned and frightened us. 

From seemingly nowhere came the woman that I had quietly shunned. As always her feet were bare and her clothing was more appropriate for an evening at a bar. The cigarette was there as well. She ignored all of us as she ran toward the apartment where the children and the battered woman were screaming for help. As she sprinted she tossed her smoke to the ground and bounded up the stairs like an Olympic runner. She pounded on the door with her fists and using language that would have made anyone blush, she demanded that the husband open up immediately or she would break the window and come inside on her own. 

We were mesmerized by her courage and soon enough the door opened as the children walked out one by one followed by their mother. The woman who had rescued them hurled a final unspeakable insult at the batterer and rushed the ragged crew to the safety of her apartment. As she passed our little group of neighbors she glared at us as though she despised us all. I felt humbled and ashamed. 

After that incident I made it a point to befriend that woman. I found her to be one of the most interesting persons I have ever known. She was an artist of great merit. She had traveled extensively around the United States. She was a fabulous mother and a woman with a huge heart. She laughed at herself for her bad habit of smoking and promised again and again that one day she would finally quit. She was an enigma in many ways, but the one clear thing about her was that she was unswervingly kind and generous. 

She eventually moved away. While we promised to stay in touch I knew that she had the soul of a rolling stone and that it was unlikely that she would stick with her plan of writing and calling frequently. Sure enough the contacts became fewer and fewer until finally one of my letters to her was returned. 

I don’t know where she is now or if she is even alive, but I think of her often. She taught me one of the most important lessons of my life which is to suspend my judgements and preconceived notions about people until I actually know them. Good people come to us in many different packages. Brilliance is not alway found  in a degree or a certain kind of dress. Habits and mannerisms do not provide us with the essence of an individual. Sometimes the most wonderful people among us don’t look the part. 

When I finally settled down into a career in teaching I remembered my friend. I understood so well the importance of valuing each individual no matter how different he or she appeared to be. I was able to respect the father whose body was covered with tattoos and piercings because I saw that he cared so much for his son. I set aside judgement of students and their environments. I found the good in people and nurtured it. My dear friend taught me how to do that and for that I am grateful to her to this very day.