I just finished three books - Help, Thanks, Wow by Anne Lamott, Something Must be Done about Prince Edward, by Kristen Green and Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans. I've read Lamott's book before. It's a quick read about the only three prayers you need in life... that speaks to me because Lamott writes what is truly in her heart. It is her willingness to reveal her vulnerabilites that appeal to me as a human being struggling to just get by every single day.
Last week, I waited for my copy of Something Must be Done about Prince Edward to arrive. I couldn't wait to read it since I have known the author, Kristen, for forever it seems. Her mother's bridal shower was the first I ever attended at age six. I babysat Kristen and her brothers. Anyway, her book, which is on everyone's must read list this summer including Oprah's, is about the public schools closing in 1959 to keep black children from going to school. The white who opposed desegregation opened their own private school with support of many prominent segregationists. This is the school I attended.
The book centers around Kristen's realization that her beloved grandfather was one of the men involved early on in the fight to prevent desegregation. Not too long ago, I read a now out-of-print book called They Closed Their Schools by Bob Smith which retells the events of the schools closing. In my 7th grade Virginia history class we studied the opening of our school. While we learned about the sacrifices people made to open the school and the respect the first students had for the campus, we never once learned about the circumstances leading to that opening. We were also never taught to hate or disrespect anyone. I admit that when I read Smith's book, I was astonished to read the names of so many people I had known and even gone to church with. I read furiously to see if my own father was mentioned. He was not, though I'm sure he was involved at some level.
Kristen does a phenomenal job in covering all the different aspects of this history. A recurring theme she writes about is that local folks wish she'd just leave that part of the past alone. It's over. Why do we need to keep talking about it? Obviously there are people who were alive then who who still have racist feelings. There are also those who were alive then who don't. And, it is evident that there is progress toward some sort of healing if people will allow it. I personally had nothing to do with the school's closing. I am sorry that they closed and I am sorry that slavery existed in the south and indeed still exists around the world today.
I am also so sorry and sad that Christinity has been marginalized by some to keep people out instead of inviting people in. This leads me to my last book Searching for Sunday. In a lot of ways, Rachel and Kristen share the same story. They struggle with their past, their roots. Rachel left her conservative evangelistic upbringing in search of a Christian community that is accepting of more open ideas about God and the church. She and her husband eventually land in an Episcopalian church and it is through this church Rachel tells her story. She does not overlook the negative aspects of the church, but she comes to a conclusion that I think Kristen missed. She writes, "I can no more break up with my religious heritage than I can with my parents.... Like it not, I've got skin in the game."
I knew Kristen's grandparents and loved them as my own. Much of Kristen's story surrounds her grandmother, fondly called Mimi, and Mimi's housekeeper Elsie. I used to venture through the tiny woods that separated our houses to play and just hang out before Mimi had her own grandchildren. I refer to her Mimi because she offered it when my cousin Jay wouldn't share our own grandmother. Though I called her Emma Lee, she was forever Mimi in my heart, especially the morning she ventured through the woods and hugged me long and hard after my dad died.
My point is this. Our past is our past. What we do with it is our charge. I went to a segregationist school. I was never taught to do anything but respect others by my parents, by my school and by my church. I, like Rachel, have ended up in an Episcopal church. Sure I notice differences in people, but more than that I look for commonalities. Jesus did not start the church, his disciples did and that's where things got sketchy. People disagree and get mad and stop talking and it's happened from the beginning of time. But, the neat thing about Jesus, believe in him or not, is that he said the kingdom isn't a destination, it's here and now. So, even though so many hurtful things have happend in the past, we can choose to learn the lessons we were actually taught to us by our elders - treat everyone with respect.
