Tag Archives: inspiration

No Angry God

Posted on August 13, 2021 | 6 comments

The pepper buds in the photo I snapped look so much larger than they are in reality. Since then, more have bloomed. Still no peppers.

I am waiting. For the tomatoes to bloom and the peppers to flower. For the sweet fruit of community peace. I don’t say world peace; that feels too big in the moment. World peace? It’s all I can do to garner peace on my windowsill; to keep the herbs growing. To keep them alive.

ln the beginning, there were seven teensy basil seeds. Meticulously, I put all of them in a pot of soil. I had doubts that the basil seeds would take root. Like I have doubts that I’ll wake one morning to find that the world has righted itself and the emboldened fascists in all countries have vanished. The basil grew and erased my doubts. My doubts about the world remain.

Within 14 days, the tiniest of leaves, so tiny I could barely see them, had sprouted. Thus (yes, I used the word “thus.”) began a cycle of magic. I received planted gifts from neighbors and friends: two cilantro plants, a mature basil plant, potted rosemary, two cherry tomato plants, and the pepper.  Will I ever see fruit from the pepper or tomatoes? I want to think that where there are buds, there is hope. My other plants, the spider plant, dracaena, jade, and lucky bamboo seem to welcome the herbs with joy. They grow as if on steroids.

I watch these plants, talk to them like I talk to the trees.  I have read that talking to plants lets them know we love them. One thing’s for sure. When I’m focused on my herbs, I’m not focused on chronically angry liars. This leads me to my rant of the week.

One has the power to choose tenderness over anger. Respect over disrespect. To choose the truth over a lie. Sadly, in countries throughout the world including the United States, folks have chosen the lie.  In the U.S., it’s The Big Lie. It’s a very, very rough time for humanity.

Chronic anger terrorizes. Chronic anger hijacks the truth. Hearing the shouts of chronically angry people has taken my gaze from the pepper plant. For a moment.  The chronically angry have done unbearable damage to our democratic structure.  We know who they are. Some are friends. Some are family. They are people who get pissed off about everything, particularly anything that seems to make another person’s life easier, better; particularly things that show compassion and respect for their fellow human beings. Like masks.

They lie about the earth’s catastrophic climate change. People are dying from the heat. They lie about the fires in California and Greece. They lie about and spread conspiracy theories about life-saving vaccines and about COVID infections. They lie about the January 6th insurrection at the United States Capitol. They die in hospitals insisting they have pneumonia and not COVID. They lie.

In my wanderings throughout the United States, I’ve learned some things. Contrary to the angry screaming of fundamentalists about a punishing God, all of this dis-ease, physical and mental suffering, is a sign of ingratitude and disrespect for the life around us: Animals. Vegetation. The air we breathe. Disrespect for human beings who inhabit every corner of this earth peacefully going about their day-to-day business and loving each other.

God is not angry with his/her creation. I don’t believe, not for one holy second, that we live under the auspices of an angry God. Amid our terrors, trials, and obstacles, people of all identities ─ spiritual, gender, racial, even political ─ are falling in love. Babies are being born. The kind-hearted and empathetic are feeding the hungry. Many Christians are following the teachings of Christ. Families are being sustained. Art is being made. Chefs are creating cuisine.  Peppers are growing on a windowsill.

We do find our way, don’t we?

For the past few minutes, I’ve watched as a red spider builds her web outside on my window screen. I squirted water on her web and she scooted away.  I didn’t want to kill her, I didn’t spray water out of anger. I just let her know that she needed to find another place to build her web.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “You cannot live here.”

She returned, just as the love of God always returns when we become aware of ourselves falling into the black hole of anger. She came back to start over. The stillness of the morning and the focus with which she does her work tells me there is no angry God.

I want to be able to clearly define the anxiety, muck, and division I feel whenever I use the word “hate.”  The word itself is exhausting. I wonder, sometimes, if the paralysis I experienced with the onset of Guillain Barre Syndrome so many years ago was a connection to my anger and the rigidity in the body. Anger: fists clenched, torso stiffened, jaw tightened, and breath held.  Anger. Do I know I am breathing? What does the word hate even mean? Merriam -Webster defines it as “intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury.” (Italics are mine.) Who injured the chronically angry one? What does she fear? As a child of the Baptist church, I know about choosing Holy words to instill fear. And yet, the waters of my Baptism at age ten changed my experience of the Bible. I would open the pages and find words of love. There is no angry God.

Xenophobia. Conspiracies and misinformation about COVID. Lies against the vaccines. The backlash against the facts of science. The unbelievably unhinged revisions to the truths about slavery and the formation of American capitalism. The denial of the genocide of Native citizens. We are facing a huge humanitarian crisis.  Still, one has the power to choose tenderness over anger, truth over falsehood, justice over injustice.   

My maternal grandparents were farmers. They grew fields of vegetables, tended grapevines, picked peaches from their trees, and prayed at four and five o’clock in the morning.  My mother once told me what my grandfather said about pesticides: “If you put that in the dirt, the plants soak it up and then you eat it.”  Science.  And the tenderness of God.

I wave my hands to the Great Invisible. And the Great Invisible answers. “Your pepper plant needs watering.”

There is no angry God.

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Posted in Creative Non-Fiction, Essay, Kindness, Philosophical rants, Political reflection, Stories about life, Values, Writing from the heart

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Breaking My Sound Barrier, Singin’ In The Kitchen

Posted on June 21, 2021 | 2 comments

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Chop. Breathe. Chop. Breathe.

Sing out loud. Swing those hips.

There was a time when original songs flew out of my mouth like candy from a broken pinata.  Not so much anymore. I’ve projected that energy into my kitchen. I put the rhythms into my knives. I put the results on my hips.

Chop, chop, chop. Breathe.

The collard greens disintegrate under the blade. They become two-inch, then one, then quarter-inch strips. The strips are almost mashed as they reach the size of popcorn kernels.

What do I plan to do with these greens? Part of the mound will be put in a salad. I’m supposed to be eating more raw food. Part of them will be juiced or blended into a green smoothie with pineapple, banana, blueberries, and flaxseed. That smoothie is one of the best parts of my day. I’ll throw the remainder into a pot with spices so expertly added that no one on the planet would miss the ham hocks or turkey wings. That’s how good I am.

But no one except me will taste these collards. The last fifteen months of COVID restrictions and lockdowns put a harness on the joy of sharing food with my friends. Of all things, this lack of sharing has been a particular sadness for me. However, the isolation has been an easy and welcome ride. So much so that I’m going to continue to isolate even as restrictions are loosened.

I spent many years with an ashram, engaging in spiritual practices like silence, practices that left me feeling comfortable being alone. And I was alone during the lockdown. With no family in the area, without visits from friends, and unable to have neighbors drop-in, I had no one to whom I could feed the homemade sushi rolls and blueberry muffins.

So what did I do during this long, quiet time? I watched food shows on Netflix. I became the online ordering maven, increasing my share of sheets, shoes, and groceries. I read food memoirs. I saved a lot of money not having to put gas in my car because there was nowhere to go. I’ve been writing, working on a book, a meandering path but one that keeps me uplifted. I discovered Zoom.

And, last but not least, I’ve had time to think about all the things my younger me wanted. I had time to do this, right? She wanted to learn how to dance ballet. (To this day, I literally get goosebumps at the sight, feel, and smell of leotards and tights.)

She thought she wanted to marry and have (whoa, Nellie!!!) eight children. 

That young girl thought she would live on a farm. Is there anything more magical than watching life springing from life over and over again?

As an empathic child, I struggled ─ too much ─ to repress my nature. Obstacles of poverty and racism pulled me away from the things I loved: music, poetry, dance. Making the world a better place.

The family holiday gatherings and church picnics, generous with the best of our gardens, farms, and cooking intelligence, only increased my feelings of love for humanity and allowed my empathy to surge. We sang. We fed each other.

Over the years, and all the things and worlds I’ve dabbled in, I’ve come to realize that cooking is a great love. This was never made more clear than during the past year and one half of my COVID safety lifestyle.

The farming thing? Well, I created that in a different form. I have an indoor hydroponic garden for herbs and small vegetables like cherry tomatoes.

I don’t feel alone.

If a camera had been placed on the cubicles above my microwave, it might have caught me dancing. It might have heard me singing a jazz tune by Sarah Vaughn or a folk song by Joni Mitchell. It certainly would have caught me shaking my behind to Sly and the Family Stone (outing my age) or old-fashioned rock ‘n’ roll while chopping those collards. It might have found me listening to hymns of Annapurna, the Hindu goddess of food. With tens of millions going without food, I am grateful to the bone for these greens.

Chop. Breathe. Shake my behind. Sing. Living a version of my younger self’s dreams.

Those collards were good.

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Posted in Creative Non-Fiction, Essay, Food, Gratitude, Life Stories, Reflection, Stories about life, Writing from the heart

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“Invictus” A New Year’s Reflection

Posted on January 24, 2017 | 4 comments

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul…

             Excerpt from the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley (1849–1903)

On a warm day, during the Christmas holiday, I, the cook who usually whines about winter, was feeling content. But a little more than a month before, on November 9th, I didn’t feel so content.

I had stopped cooking, felt as if I could barely breathe, and teetered on the abyss of lost faith. Damn it. Who were those people that did not vote? The United States Election Project estimated that approximately 56.9 percent of eligible voters actually cast ballots in the 2016 presidential election. A fellow writer declared it a national disgrace. I agree. So I asked anyone who would listen, “who are these people?” The answers I got taught me about some of the people in my world. There’ll be some changes made.

As November became December, my anger, frustration, and fear receded. Anger and fear are (for me) such immobilizing forces. I needed to reconnect with that part of me that is unconquered by fear.

So, on that warm morning, I did what I needed to do.  I thanked God for a new day, stared into an empty skillet, and got started with a holiday meal. I needed to turn my attention to the things that mattered in my life: good health, good food, productive thought, writing, and spiritual nourishment. I needed to not be afraid.

I decided to roast a whole chicken in an attempt to make up for a horrifying Thanksgiving turkey disaster. While I’m certain kitchen life is not what Henley had in mind, I needed to keep going. I might have easily given up and cooked pasta because, truth be told, I could’ve killed a prize fighter with the drum sticks from that Thanksgiving bird. But I would not be conquered. With some trepidation, I pushed forward with “Invictus” going around and around in my brain the whole time.

Long ago, a boss of mine said with amazement, “God, you’re tenacious.” Hmm. If he only knew. I read that “Invictus” inspired Nelson Mandela every day of his 27 year imprisonment. I understand why. The words light a fire of conviction in my heart. Keep going.

Not so long ago, I was rifling through some old journals and came upon an essay I wrote about one of the most unconquerable souls I know: my mother. I know that if she had known this poem she would have repeated these lines to herself:

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul…

One evening, as she sank into the warmth of her favorite chair, she nibbled on a piece of sweet potato pie. I watched and listened as she smacked her lips with deliberate and stubborn enjoyment. I shivered inside at how much I feared her. Who else could eat pie with such authority?

We’d just had a discussion—or was it an argument?—in which she, once again, silenced me with her eyes. Never mind the documented facts of what we were discussing. Only one fact mattered: she was the mother; I was the child (even though I was well into my 50s).

“So stubborn,” I thought to myself. She smacked her lips in satisfaction.

“Mom. Have you always been this way? So stubborn?”

This was my pitiful attempt at regaining some kind of self-dignity.

“Yes!”

She smacked with impenetrable–I dare say unconquerable–glee. Her life hadn’t seen much glee. But once she found it, she would not let her glee be suppressed. Our roles are complete. Mother. Daughter. This is the way things are and always will be, even after we are both long gone from the planet. This is who I learned from. I’ve inherited this great stubbornness, this unconquerability. This certain kind of fearlessness. This trait has served me well.

It’s nearing the end of January; we have a new president. This past weekend over a million women  and their supporters marched in protest of the new administration and its proposed policies. My friend Sherri said, “Democracy in action! Warriors strengthen yourselves; prepare yourself for battle. This is Medieval.”

Unconquerable.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

I’ll not be conquered by fear.

Oh, about that chicken… I could’ve shaved nails with the breast of that bird. But I’ll keep working at it.

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Posted in Writing from the heart

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No Weeping

Posted on September 16, 2016 | 5 comments

I do not weep at the world. I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.  Zora Neale Hurston

We sharpened our knives. Not for oysters, but fish.

“Improvise!”

Ms. Hurston’s words seemed to be my father’s modus operandi. At 6’3’’, 200-plus pounds and muscular, Daddy commanded the attention of everyone around him. The world busied itself with issues of poverty, race, war, and class, things that affected our segregated lives directly. Eating together as family offered respite.

In creating a meal, Daddy made it up as he went along, singing or whistling most of the time. His resonant bass seemed almost too big for our tiny apartment; it saturated the walls of the small kitchen along with the smell of hot sauce and onions.

We are from a Gullah tradition, descendants of West African slaves who settled along the South Carolina coast building a proud and distinct culture. They called us geechee, a once pejorative term. For us, everything began with rice. One of us would put the pot of rice on, and Daddy would decide what vegetables and spices would be going into the fish or meat dish. We were curious, and each of us showed our curiosity in different ways.

As the eldest daughter, I offered a frowning face. I  knew my sister and I would be assigned the job of gutting, scaling, and taking the heads off the trout, perch, croaker, or whatever he and his friends brought back from their day of tossing lines and hooks. If we happened to find a fish belly full of roe (which I would not eat, thank you very much), Daddy was very, very happy.

While I frowned, my mother, an exemplary cook accustomed to Daddy’s larger-than-life show of enthusiasm, rolled her eyes.  My sister, an adventurous eater, could not wait. Hungry with curiosity, she could not hide her excitement about culinary exploration (that hasn’t changed. Alligator meat?! Sigh…) I vaguely remember my brothers in the background, watching and learning what it took to be a man adept in the kitchen. My father’s example was a strong one; every one of my brothers became an excellent cook.

“Does any meal stand out as a favorite for you?”

I waited in silence as my sister, 3000 miles away, surfed her memory.  Fish was usually fried or grilled, and often accompanied by savory brown gravy.

“Yes. It was like a stew.  Not the ordinary fish and gravy.  It was a rich broth, thick with lots of flavor.”

I could almost taste her fondness for the meal in my mouth.  Fish stew. Of course. That’s what happened with all of those fish heads.

Somehow, the things that were the least irritating and the most comforting have masked or chased away experiences that were the most frightening and least understood. The shadow in our lives was alcohol. Daddy drank.

A survivor of World War II and the Pacific Theater, he suffered nightmares for years, I am told. Alcohol dammed his weeping on those days when he would drive 30 or more miles into Maryland for a brick masonry job only to be told that they weren’t hiring “coloreds” that day. I only remember seeing him weep once, when a dear, dear friend of his died.

But this morning, my mental snapshot is of Daddy standing over the stove, his arms in the air, and a world-engulfing, rapturous delight on his face.

He was fatherly in the best of ways: pretending to be a horse so the children, cousins and all, could get rides on his back; taking us to the carnivals that his volunteer fire department put on every summer—rides and cotton candy included.

Going to the circus, I wanted to grow up and become a part of the magic. Baseball games, finally integrated, inspired my interest in the athletic, even though I felt closer to dance. But I still have my father’s baseball. And, while it is almost a cliché, I stood on his feet as he taught me the cha-cha and whirled me around the room. White hatred could not reach us in these places. He was never MIA (missing in action) like too many fathers. They don’t know what they are giving up.

“Improvise!”

Some salt, hot pepper, greens and onions. The meals, seafood or meat, weren’t complicated. His eighth-grade education and life experience made him an excellent philosopher and improviser. Daddy was bold in his flavors and his life. He faced things as they came along, following an internal compass about people, life, and food. No one in the family, immediate or extended, would ever lack food. I can’t and won’t speak for anyone else, but I intuited that he wanted me to live by the heart.

“Improvise!”

A few days after his funeral, I had a dream. He was in formation with other soldiers, and as I walked up to him, he stepped out of formation, turned to me, and saluted.

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Posted in African American, Creative Non-Fiction, Essay, Family memories, Food, Stories about life, Values, Writing from the heart

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Okra

Posted on September 6, 2015 | 4 comments

Hi there. I’ve been away for a while. It scares me because part of me is not clear how two months went by without writing a thing on these pages. Part of me wants to say that it has been my participation in other writing projects, but the other part of me knows better.

Prior to my diagnosis of GBS/CIDP, I was infatuated with my own cooking ability. Now that sounds egotistical, but the truth is: I would kiss myself in the kitchen. Now that I’m getting my strength back and can do some shopping, chopping, and sautéing (thanks to my food processor and Blendtec super machine), life is, I must say, very, very good. Take today, for instance. Do you smell that? It’s chicken livers and onions smothered in gravy. This former vegan is a happy eater.

There’s a lot of healing, and not just physical, that comes with preparing my own food. There’s no mystery to this. Folks have been writing about it for centuries and continue to write about it today. Food is healing, but cooking it yourself is quantum healing.

So about the title. I’ve never liked okra. By the way, that means never. Growing up with Southern food, okra was a major ingredient. There was stewed tomatoes and okra over rice dinner. And gumbo. There was also just plain old fried okra. If there is one vegetable guaranteed to get my gag reflex going, it’s okra. So imagine my surprise — really, I’m not kidding — when I was at the farmers market last week and I found myself reaching for okra. I’d heard that it has lots of anti-inflammatory qualities and vitamins and such, so I fell for it.

Before I go further, I want to point out that I figured out that my temporary separation from the blog was a good thing. I was swimming in the muck of what was wrong with this world. It doesn’t take much to hear it, see it, feel it. It’s all around us. Yet, once I started diving into writing about issues, something amazing happened. I stopped writing. I was depressed.

I know about issues. Look at me. I live in the United States. I know issues aplenty. But my reason for writing had fallen into a sewer of social and political angst. Preachiness, judgment, and— well, you know.

This morning, when I realized why I subconsciously took two months off, I took a photograph of my chicken livers. Damn, that felt good.

9-6 blog

Back to okra. Two childhood foods stand out in my mind: my love for liver and onions and my distaste for okra. So, after I purchased the okra from the farmer, I needed to do something with it. I was moaning to an 80-year-old woman I know about my waste of money when she suggested that I fry them. I remembered frying okra at my mother’s suggestion 20 years ago. That was the last time I cooked okra.

Nevertheless, I gave it a whirl using a mixture of seasoned flour and Italian bread crumbs. Nothing fancy. Just the seasonings, the ghee that I fried them in, and the beautiful cucumber tomato salad on the side.

August 2015 001

I’m no food stylist, and the pictures sure aren’t pretty, but I’ll tell you one thing: I’m out of my funk.

Welcome home, Sala.

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Posted in African American, Creative Non-Fiction, Essay, Food, Memoir, Values, Writing from the heart

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Sanguine

Posted on November 21, 2014 | 2 comments

An apple. A cup of grapes. A banana. Pineapple chunks. Flax seed and kale. There’s nothing remarkable about blending fruit and vegetables. What’s remarkable is the power of these drinks in my healing. I am gaining strength and experiencing so much more vitality each day. Raw, blended food seems to be reducing my body’s inflammation. The experience keeps me quite optimistic. I remain sanguine with CIDP.

Sanguine. As an adjective: “Optimistic or positive, especially in an apparently bad or difficult situation.”

Sanguine.

In the middle of one of the most challenging segments of my life, I wake up optimistic. In the middle of one of the most challenging times in American history, a new “Reconstruction,” we must remain sanguine.

Americans are being intellectually and physically terrorized by Americans. From Florida to Ferguson, Missouri to Congress, extremist thought has infiltrated the political process in a frightening way.

We cannot allow ourselves to be frightened.

The inevitability of a shift in demographics in this country has led some citizens and lawmakers to lose their minds. Now, the only way elected Tea Party/Republican officials advance their agenda is by spreading the poison of ethnic hatred. Fascism is a very nasty word.

When we are complacent–and you know who you are–about voting, we get what we got. The deaths in American history, all to ensure the right to vote, are the colors we wear (did I mention sanguine is also a color: blood red?). It’s beyond stupid. It’s dangerously dumb to not vote. I remain sanguine and angry with folks who do not vote.

Yet. Despite it all (and African and Native Americans in this country have seen it all), people of good heart continue to fall in love, plan families, raise children, vote, complete educations, play sports, work hard, create music and art and–like Michelangelo with his blocks of marble–see the potential in the ordinary. We live socially just, compassionate, and joyful lives. We are sanguine about the future. Yes, today’s America still holds more than a splash of optimism.

Once again, summer has surrendered to a shiny autumn moon. Meteorologists forecast a hard winter. But we always expect the best outcomes.

Home 001

There is an ancient potency, a fertile, tender marriage between Spirit and optimism. Spring will come again. It’s guaranteed. We will survive autumn rains, the inevitable snow, and a neo-fascist Tea Party/Republican majority in Congress.

We are sanguine.

Oh, oh. It’s 6 am.  Time to think about blended smoothies and juicing. I’m optimistic that more and more folks will examine the long held beliefs that keep them from becoming truly authentic, love based, socially responsible people. Because, in the final analysis, we are responsible to each other, and Love–that’s right–is supremely present. Enya sings, “When Love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?”

Sanguine.

I come by it honestly.  The book under my elbows is The Little Red Caboose.  

“I think I can, I think I can…”

Yours truly,

All rights reserved Sala G. Wyman

All rights reserved Sala G. Wyman

P.S.  Sorry to be late with the post this month…I will be better.  I remain sanguine.

 

 

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Posted in Writing from the heart

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Fecund

Posted on August 15, 2014 | 5 comments

The word means fertile, fruitful, abundant. Ours is a fecund world of 7 billion — old, young, and all in between — giving birth to new life in all forms: a child, a poem, a work of fiction or history, music. Somewhere, someone is giving birth to secular or spiritual knowledge. More often than not— no matter the opinions of the chicken little doom and gloomers — our experiences, even the negative ones, and productivity serve to enrich and enliven the heart.

Take the writers who choose to birth memoir for example. Forged from a lot of work and soul searching, good memoir is rich with life experiences that, with any luck and grace, make our paths in this world a little bit — or a lot — brighter. How do they do it, these writers? How do they dip so deeply into the well of their own fertility to transform lives?

As I continue to reach for that lofty goal, I find that, in the heat of daily life, it’s easy to overlook or miss the fertility of experience— ensuring that it will be forgotten.

Bluefield, West Virginia

In 1967 I enrolled in a small college in the picturesque town of Bluefield, West Virginia. In retrospect, my application to the school wasn’t so much about academics as it was about leaving home. My high school grades were abysmal at best, but I was young, curious, and enthusiastic with a high school counselor who worked on my behalf. Lucky to get in is an understatement. I looked forward with gratitude to my new life.

Bordered by Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and Virginia, with Bluefield at its southernmost tip, West Virginia is definitely, most definitely the south. Bluefield is less than 70 miles from North Carolina. Having spent my childhood summers in South Carolina, I was familiar, to say the least, with the South and its culture. Remember, this was 1967.

But I wasn’t really thinking about that.

I was thrilled to be attending a school that was an historically black college. Once named Bluefield Colored Institute, the college became Bluefield State Teachers College—now Bluefield State College. I did not know that, at the time, it was in the throes of a designed shift in racial demographics.  (http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/10/18/236345546/the-whitest-historically-black-college-in-america) National Public Radio.)

(I also did not know that a nemesis from high school was a student at the college, that she would steal my full-length red suede coat that I had sweated at the phone company to buy, and that I would have yet another lesson in standing up to a bully and getting my possessions back. My name was even written inside the coat. Seriously Sharon? All the way in West Virginia?)
 

Pastoral scenery. An all-black campus. These were my desires. I’d spent so much time in rural countryside that I deeply looked forward to the nature of things. I love this country landscape. But this is what I do not understand: with all of my love for the rural, how have I always resided so close to the city? More on that another time, but the fruit of my fertilization by both cultures cannot be underestimated.

 

John Denver’s Country Roads only begins to lionize the West Virginia landscape that greeted me. The hearts of the people I encountered planted within me a seed of service and understanding that continues to grow in my life.

 

On my arrival, the campus had changed. Community tension was high as black students protested, and fears were heightened by rumors of Klan activity. My alliances with community activists complicated things for me in the ultraconservative, religious African-American home where I rented a room. God bless the fate of the naïve. I had not counted on the fear-based hostility from some of the local blacks as being a part of the mix. The fear was understandable. In an historic coal mining town where, even today, the black population is only 23%, I had a lot to learn. I was asked to leave, but received a reprieve after a community action leader that the family respected approached them on my behalf.

Judaism. I knew nothing. The Diary of Anne Frank, which I read in high school, was the extent of my knowledge about the Jewish faith and culture. but when I met a young Orthodox couple who invited me to my first Seder, I began to understand things. I learned that the Klan didn’t like them either. And I remember the reverence with which they celebrated the Sabbath. They lovingly shared why and how they separated the silverware. They were not community activists, but my understanding of community expanded.

Hill people. I hate stereotypes. And although the Beverly Hillbillies was a hit on television, it did not picture the simple, heavyset white woman in the hills who stopped the bleeding after I ripped my knee on a barbed wire fence in waist deep snow. I can’t remember why we were in the hills; it wasn’t a particularly safe place to be. But she fed us buttermilk biscuits, chicken with gravy, mashed potatoes, and called the doctor — who gave me a tetanus shot, but would not stitch the wound because he didn’t want to touch black skin. I have the scar to this day.

She was a woman with an open mind and a loving heart. I cannot remember the racist doctor’s face, but I remember hers. I remember the fields surrounding her small home, the snow up to our knees, the cows in the frozen pastures, and the comfort of her living room as she asked about our intentions.

I met students and volunteers committed to making America a better place. My activities got me expelled from school at the end of my first semester, a year before the anger exploded — literally — with the bomb in the gym. But the world had become richer, a more fecund place to be. One in which I would never turn my back on service.

Note: Thank you to the Mercer County Convention and Visitors Bureau for the lovely landscapes!

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Posted in Writing from the heart

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On: Tenderness

Posted on August 2, 2013 | Leave a comment

Dignity

What was it that Otis Redding said? Oh yes.

Try a little tenderness.

Tenderness.

Why is it so challenging to bask in the love that we all desire? I believe that it is everyone’s intention to surround themselves with the softness of life. By that I don’t mean the softness of material things, the silks and satins and cashmere of life. I mean the softness that comes with peace of being… Soft. Tenderness.

It’s a quiet summer afternoon. I’m looking out the window and watching butterflies circle the backyard. They seem completely at ease. Is it because, amazingly, the black cat with the strange green eyes is at ease? Is she practicing cat tenderness?  She doesn’t move from her perch as the butterflies and birds flit around her. Only the gray squirrel raises a racket. There is no threat. Softness abounds.

Sunlight fills crevices like liquid. My soul is filled with tenderness. And I, who thrive on seeing the world through rose-colored glasses, want to believe that every human being loves the sun.

The poets, romantics, musicians, spiritual teachers — even scientists — testify to the healing power of tenderness. Go ahead, say it isn’t so. But you’ll find yourself in some very isolated company.

I’m reminded of mornings on my grandparents’ farms. Both maternal and paternal grandparents knew the power of tenderness and peace. My own memories allow me to understand why my mother, in her dementia, retreats to a place of softness and safety.

Not too long ago, I was asked by a health practitioner to remember what that tenderness feels like in my body. I was happy to revisit that glorious childhood experience. Vacations were watercolor mornings, filled with strolls amid the corn, watermelon, and tomato fields with paternal and maternal grandfathers. For me, our small farms and communities played in my mind as barricades against treacherous white men whose daily bread filled them with the hatred required to circle the south looking for unarmed black men and boys.

“Remember what that tenderness felt like,” they say. It’s because currently my life requires the wondrous gift of tenderness: regular rest, naps, real food and more proteins (did I tell you I now eat poultry as well as fish? Gone, gone are those days of self-righteous food Puritanism!) I eat vigilantly, and monitor my emotions. “Get eight hours sleep,” said my dear physiatrist Dr. J.

For 40 years when I thought of South Carolina away from my grandparents’ homes, I thought of a place contaminated with murder and the blood and bones of enslaved black people. With my maternal grandparents gone, their home and land sold, and my estrangement from the conservative religious views of the South, there was no reason to return to that place. History suffocated tenderness.

Then I attended a family reunion in Myrtle Beach and the feelings flooded back. The signs on stores, restaurants, and bathrooms and drinking fountains — “colored” and “white, ” placed there to kill the human spirit while threatening the physical body — were gone.

Those signs had pitted my tender heart against my gentle maternal grandfather. When I was about 10 years old, he took us into the city of Sumter to run errands and buy sweets. As if in slow motion, I found myself bowing my head to drink from a fountain clearly marked “white only.” My grandfather did what he had to do to protect me.

He grabbed me by the collar with such force I thought I would choke. My lips never touched the water. Later on, sitting on the porch in his arms, surrounded by the night songs of frogs and crickets in a dark so black you could not see the outline of trees, and the smell of the forest so sweet I wanted to wrap it around my skin, I came to understand three things:

the incredible love and tenderness in the heart of the man forced to take such action;  the incredible love and tenderness in the heart of the man saddened by his own action and; the incredible love and tenderness in my own heart that allowed me to keep loving him.

Tenderness in its myriad forms — family, church, and community — ensured our survival. Tenderness has contributed, in spite of the traumas of living, to the person that I am.

It is a tender summer day and I wonder: If every person, politicians especially, accessed a single memory of tenderness, would the world be a very different place? I, who thrive on seeing the world through rose-colored glasses, would like to think it so.

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On Being Stardust – a.k.a. Science Confirms What God Knew All the Time.

Posted on December 25, 2012 | Leave a comment

I LOVE it when science and God kiss.

Merry Christmas.

Happy Kwanza.

Happy New Year.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jlw-Y4WhEg

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On… The sweetness of a name

Posted on November 10, 2012 | 3 comments

This blog is quivery and yellow–  like pineapple Jell-O.  It shimmies and shakes as I struggle through what has become an extraordinary array of challenges.

From carpal tunnel to feet that require the use of a cane or walker, I have been traveling the road to patience and health. It hasn’t been easy, but I have the support of friends and a basically happy outlook. I am also inclined to whine a bit.

With that said, I recognize the need to keep jabbering away. Silence is not acceptable for a blog. This week in particular was an ecstatic one for me as my choice for the American presidency won the race. I am thrilled that President Obama won his second term. And now, we can get to work, the real work, of equal opportunity for all.

Now for this week’s word: names.

I, for one, am intimately connected with the experience of names, having spent years accepting or rejecting several of my own. I was my father’s firstborn, and as such, my birth name reflected his joy and prayers. My birth name meant “gracious gift of God,” and both the name and its meaning lifted me up in good and trying times. I never abandoned the name — not really. Its meaning allowed me to, at least inside my head, recognize myself as a beloved daughter of God, a belief that has revealed itself to me in good times and been hidden away in times of stress or fear.

Given that, in so many cultures, the child’s name describes a dominant personality trait, and with cousins that had nicknames like Cunning or Bossy, I figured I lucked out.

Still, over the years, I have tried on new names like a judge at a dessert tasting contest. How I started the journey is unclear, but there was this point in my development where I felt that my name was restrictive, a sentence to an impenetrable goody-two-shoes life. By the time I moved into a small apartment (and I mean small!) in San Francisco in 1969, I had decided to try out the name of Susan.

Right.

“Susan” was the name of business and surety and normalcy. But anyone who knows me will tell you that I am not a Susan, and that shirt would not fit. So, I abandoned Susan when I returned to the East Coast, started working in theater, and eventually met a troop of African-American actors where we all took African names. The name Sala came out of that experience. My father said “you will always be what I named you.” This was significant because there were times when I felt he did not like me. But his statement said that, to him, I would always be a gracious gift of God.

What was I looking for? What identity did I feel was missing? In India, I asked a meditation master to give me a new name. She told me to keep my own name. This began the inner work of trying to know who I am beyond the labels I use to describe myself: a woman, African-American, creative. I was the pound cake waiting to be drenched in the liquid lemony frosting of my own nature. After several years, I received a name from the meditation master. And, in the end, I discovered that all the names I lived with had essentially the same meaning. And the river of God ran through every single one of them.

Sala meant gentle or peace. Gloria Jean, my birth name, meant gracious gift of God, and the blessing I received from my teacher was the name of Gopi, which meant that I was to be a lover of God in all his forms. I had been bathed in the lemony frosting of my nature for my whole life, but couldn’t taste its sweetness.

Finally, I am enjoying the taste of my own nature. There’s more to come.  Yum.

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