A Personal Story of Crazy Faith

English: en:Mary McLeod Bethune (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am in the midst of my own “crazy faith” experience, and it is so intense that I thought I’d better write about it!

For those of you who do not know, I wrote a book called Crazy Faith: Ordinary People; Extraordinary Lives. In the book, I talk about people, including Moses, Mother Teresa, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Washington and Emily Roebling, who built the Brooklyn Bridge. I talked about their amazing, crazy faith, believing that something most people deemed crazy and impossible to be absolutely possible.

It was their crazy faith, I wrote, that drove them.

The image that sticks with me this day is that of Moses, standing at the Red Sea, having only his faith that is telling him that somehow, he and the Israelites will get to the other side before they are trounced upon by the Egyptians. And I am thinking of the crazy faith that Mother Teresa had as she worked and lived amongst the poor, believing that all she needed would be provided and that she and her nuns would be not only all right, but taken care of by this God who had given the vision.

Well, it seems God has jokes. I am living my own “crazy faith” experience, as I just wrote. We are doing a CDF Freedom Schools® program and we don’t have near the money we need to do it! All we have is God …and crazy faith.

Being in this situation is making me understand, not from an intellectual point of view, but from a visceral place, what “crazy faith” is. I see the stares people give me, the ones who know how little money we have. I see the doubt in their eyes; I can imagine the conversations they have when I am not around. I can only imagine what kinds of stares Moses got, or Mother Teresa, or Emily Roebling as she took over the brass tacks of getting that Brooklyn Bridge built as her husband lay ill. I can imagine how Mary McLeod’s stomach must have turned as she baked sweet potato pies to get money to give to a man for a piece of land she knew was to be hers, in order to build a school for kids that nobody wanted or believed in.

I think the skin must have peeled from their knuckles, figuratively speaking, as they looked “impossible” in the face, and yet they kept going.

My knuckles are skinless, but I have not heard God say anything like, “Oops! I told you the wrong thing.” No, what stirs in my soul is the plight and condition of too many black, brown and poor children, in public schools that are not really serving them well. I see little kids, pre-third grade, with eyes wide open, expectant and eager to learn, only to be disappointed by their educational experience and the fact that they feel, that early, this thing that circulates in our society that tells them that they are inferior, second-class citizens. I see their faces, and I hear God saying, “keep moving.”

CDF Freedom Schools have a track record of producing children who, no matter how poor, learn to read and learn to love to learn. In its literature, the program says that the program has been called “a curriculum of hope.” The Freedom School environment is one where children who have lived with neglect from home and society feel a safe, warm, nurturing place, interacting with people who believe in them and who remind them that they really can do anything they want. The integrated reading curriculum, the culturally relevant books …the entire program is a testament to what real investment in black, brown and poor children can do.

It has been shown that if children do not learn how to read, they begin to “act out” by third grade, and many face lives of, as Thoreau said, “quiet desperation,” trying to find their way, their voice, in the world. Many simply end up on a path of destruction; CDF has identified the “cradle to prison” pipeline, which too many children wind up in …largely because they cannot read.

Freedom Schools challenge the notion that these children cannot learn, and they have statistics to show that they are on the right track. About 65 percent of all children who participate in these schools show dramatically improved reading scores. Hooray for the proof…

If nothing else, I have a passion for our children, for any child who is left to the side and neglected. I hate it when reports come out saying how poorly African-American children do in school, because I know that our children are just as capable as other children. They are just working from a different paradigm… I so desperately want to have a foot in the door of making a difference for these children. Last year, over 12,800 attended Freedom Schools, nationally. This year, our 50 students will be among the number. That is the goal…

And so God whispers to me, “keep going.” Tears roll down my face, I get so nervous. I wonder if Moses cried, or if Mary McLeod Bethune cried? If they didn’t, I cry for them…because if they felt this pull, this pressure, that comes before God acts, I’m sure they wanted to cry, even if they didn’t. At the end of the day, it was their faith in God that made them stay the course.

They are my role models, and the God who has jokes …is forever my guide.

A candid observation

Girl Talk: Oh! The Shoes!

There was a time when shoes meant nothing to me.

Growing up, we had, basically, three pairs of shoes each: a pair of black patent leathers for Sundays, a pair of school shoes, which might be Mary Jane or loafers or saddle Oxfords and, in the summer, a pair of Keds gym shoes.

I wore black shoes with everything outside of school… and so it was no big deal to me when, after I grew up, to wear black shoes with everything too.

But my girlfriends saw that I needed training. One didn’t wear black shoes with everything, they told me, just like one didn’t wear bell-bottomed jeans in the 80s, even if they were pressed and creased…

And so began shopping excursions where my girlfriends taught me the fine art of shoe shopping. They challenged me to try different colors (to go with your different outfits, for goodness’ sake!), different styles (you can’t wear the same style in 14 colors, Susan!) and different designers.

It was a whole new world!

I thought about my transformation today because I saw a colleague of mine wearing a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes. I recognized them because of the red soles; closer examination with my now fine-tuned eye for shoe fashion revealed that they were in fact the real thing. I had to chuckle, because there was a time I would not have noticed nor would I have cared.

It has occurred to me that a girl has to have diversions, and shopping for shoes is about the best diversion I know of, other than reading. There is a joy in finding just the right pair of shoes, at, of course, the right price. My obsession is with dress shoes, but I have girlfriends whose obsession is boots, others crave sneakers, and others, sandals. We don’t need these shoes. We want these shoes.

The earliest shoes appeared to have been created in the Middle Paleolithic period, about 40,000 years ago. During a period of time known as the High Renaissance, women wore slipper-type coverings over their feet, usually made of brocade or some other fabric. Because the slipper was not waterproof, the women (and men) had to wear what was called a “patten,” which was an overshoe made of wood with a raised sole, so the wearer’s feet would stay dry. Women also wore what were called “chopines,” which were again, overshoes made of wood, sometimes very high. These chopines were often so high that the women who wore them often had to have their servants (or friends) help them walk and stay upright. Despite the discomfort, and a periodically disappointed suitor who thought he was marrying a very tall beauty, only to find out that her chopines made her much taller than she actually was, the obsession with shoe fashion continued.

Some chopines were reported to be 30 inches high! They were eventually outlawed, as they were thought to have caused too many women to suffer miscarriages.

Ancient artwork on caves in Spain show pictures of men with animal skins wrapped around their feet, and people who lived in very cold climates, it has been learned, sought to cover their feet as well.

But those were functional shoes…we women, it seemed, took shoes to an entirely different level!

At the end of the day, does it make a difference what we have on our feet? In some developing countries, women wear no shoes at all, or, at best, they wear flimsy flip-flops. Clearly, people in poor and developing countries are more aligned to the original purpose of shoes: to protect the feet.

But it seems that as early as the Renaissance, or maybe sooner, women became fascinated with footwear, a fascination which has only increased with time. Many of us are just plain self-indulgent as we address our “issue” with shoes. I try to justify it by noting that my standard price of shoes is about $59.95; in other words, I am not extravagant or reckless in my shoe shopping. That makes the obsession better, right? Probably not.

I suppose I could go back to wearing black shoes with everything, like I did coming out of my youth, but having this obsession is a lot more fun. After all, a girl has to have diversions …

A candid observation …

Answering Facebook Inboxes: Me, God, and Same-Sex Anything…

Answering Facebook Inboxes: Me, God, and Same-Sex Anything….

Debulk the Congress?

I wonder what America would be like if it were “debulked” of its political system, or, more specifically, of its Congress?

I just picked up the term, “debulk,” while reading a review of a book, Memoir of a Debulked Woman: Enduring Ovarian Cancer, by Susan Gubar. The review, written by Elsa Dixler and which appeared in The New York Times Book Review this week, describes debulking as “evisceration or vivisection or disembowelment, but performed on a live human being.” Gubar, a feminist scholar who describes her bout with ovarian cancer in the reviewed book, underwent surgery to be “debulked” after her cancer was discovered. This surgery involves trying to get out as much of the cancerous tissue by taking as much of it out as possible, as well as affected organs. The operation, said the article, is thought to extend the life of the cancer patient, but does not cure the disease.

I thought of the term as I listened to a news report about the senate race in Indiana, where veteran Republican Senator Dick Lugar is being challenged by a Tea Party opponent, Richard Mourdock, who is apparently going after Lugar mostly for his ability and record to have “reached across the aisle” to reach compromise in his role as a legislator of this country. Lugar is the nation’s longest-serving Republican senator.

There seems that the lack of desire to compromise is at the core of this nation’s political gut, and it spreads, or has spread, an ugly spirit throughout the nation. If I understand the lessons of my elementary, middle and high school civics classes, the three branches of government were put into place so as to prevent the monopoly of any political party or individual in terms of policy or ideology, thereby assuring a more fair government for “we the people,” as opposed to for “we, some of the people.” Compromise helps that ideal to be realized, right?

The desire for compromise, however, has been viciously opposed. Reluctance to compromise has been at our core for a while but it has gotten so much worse since 2008, and the vitriol which has accompanied it has seemingly metastasized in mammoth proportions. Our nation’s Congress has argued and quibbled over the most basic things, at the expense of the country,and the refusal to compromise and look for common ground has created a rancid atmosphere of political disease which really threatens the very life of this nation.

This diseased body politic is completely impotent to deal with our nation’s issues. All that it has done for the past four years is stirred the pots of its own dysfunction, despite rhetoric that it is concerned with “the American people.” Which American people would that be? The 42 million who live in poverty? The women whose health care needs are being threatened by disastrous policies? The students whose student loan debt is keeping them in perpetual debt?

What if the nation were debulked of its Congress? What if all three branches of government were excised, as it were, and a whole new set of legislators and jurists were put into place, along with a new executive branch? Maybe what has happened is that the Congress has been diseased by members having been in place for too long. Doctors say that much cancer comes from bad diets and lack of exercise. Maybe the Congress became cancerous a while ago, because of inaction and resultant complacency. Maybe the Congress needs to be debulked, and the government needs some political chemotherapy, to rid the nation of any residual ideology which results in such impassivity and rancor.

Like the treatment for ovarian cancer, the debulking will not cure the disease…but it may prolong the life of these United States.

A candid observation…

Girl Talk: After Divorce

It hit me that we girls don’t talk a lot about something that happens when we go through divorce: people we used to be friends with stop talking to us.

I have been divorced for many years, but I can still remember when, after the divorce was final, how the friends I thought I had stopped inviting me to their houses, to their parties and picnics. Friends with whom both my husband and I had shared really precious times sort of, it seemed, erased me from their lives.

It wasn’t only friends, either. It was people like the guy who had been keeping our furnace and air conditioner in shape for years. All of a sudden, when I’d call him, he wasn’t available. No matter how many times I called, he never called back.

Needless to say, some of the people in the church regarded me as a sinful woman. I was a pastor, after all. How in the world could I be trusted to preach to my people, and even more be trusted to give marital and pre-marital counseling, when obviously, I was lacking in character and in knowing how to keep a man?

I couldn’t figure it out. Some friends who were divorced stop speaking, but more, it was friends, my lady friends, who were NOT divorced whose silence and distance puzzled me. Was it because I was now viewed as a threat? Were they afraid that my failure as a wife was somehow contagious, and that they would get “the illness” if they remained close? I only ask because years after the divorce, some of those friends, all of whom are now divorced themselves, have been gingerly moving back toward me, making contact.

Seriously?

As I have listened to women over the years go through divorce, I realize that it isn’t just me; too many women have the same story, but it would be great if we women wouldn’t back away from each other at such an awful time. It’s precisely at times like that, when your life is falling apart and the ground on which you’ve always stood falls from under your feet – no, more accurately, crumbles as you stand there, that you need your sister friends most.

I ached as I read the story of how the late Elizabeth Edwards, betrayed by her husband, was so crushed by his affair that she yelled at him in public and bared her chest, which showed the scars of breast cancer. How horrible for her to feel that depth of pain! I found myself wondering if her pain was exacerbated by friends who simply disappeared as she and her husband went through their pain, oh so publicly.

I don’t know what it is about us that makes us shy away from each other in critical moments, any more than I understand why we so often stab each other in the heart and/or back when it comes to getting a mate, but I can say that, during divorce, the friend who is real is the friend who sticks with you through it all.

A candid observation …