Every Day is a New Revelation

I'm thinking about change.  A year ago, I was learning and teaching history at Conway Christian School, watching my daughter Emma prepare for those last two years of high school that would see her off to college, leaving Dan and me home alone in our big empty house.  Our lives were set, for the most part.

Then, in the spring, Dan had an opportunity to move an hour away to Searcy,  to become a full-time faculty member in the College of Business at Harding.  To reenvision your life is brave; it acknowledges that you understand that we are all unfinished. Teaching is certainly not something one masters overnight, and teachers are forever refining their methods. But I know he will be good at it. Sometimes the process of newness is uncomfortable, but that's how it is for each of us when we are becoming something altogether different.  These days, every day is a new revelation for him, and for us all.

We pulled 16-year-old Emma's roots up and transplanted her to Harding Academy, a place where she will be well-served, but every day is a brand new to her as well. She is adjusting to the changes from being an Eagle to a Wildcat,  and we pray that God teaches her the lessons that will serve her best, and will glorify Him, through the transformation of her life, and of all of our lives.

As for me, I left my classroom and my familiar set of high school students behind for a few revelations myself.  In these Harding classrooms, I'm not the teacher; I'm the full-time graduate student, schlepping my computer bag around campus vaguely shocked when students defer to me and call me "ma'am" in line at the printer in the library, for I am one of them -- at least on the inside.  On the outside, I am somewhat shopworn with highlighted hair -- a sign of a woman uncertain as to exactly how much gray she actually has, and vaguely afraid to confront the reality.

This is a good place to be, although in a way exhausting every day with its newness.  Some people are more resilient by nature than others.  I think I am the most naturally "bendy" of anyone in my family, and still, the transition is a little wearing.  Every task I have to do for the first time, no matter how mundane,  requires a decision to be made:  the eye doctor, the oil change, the dry cleaner, the best place to get coffee.

Which brings me to Midnight Oil.  This morning I'm sitting in the corner of a coffee shop on the edge of campus, where I was greeted by a young, open-faced blonde barista beaming with welcome as she took my order.  She sized me up, intuitively understanding I might not know how they did business here, and carefully not making me feel foolish for not understanding that I had to sign my credit card slip with my fingertip on the iPad register setup. I like it here.  The beveled glass in the windows rattles as the doors open and close. The floors creak as customers pass with their mochas and their laptops; the millwork is beaten and worn. Avett Brothers tunes flow from the speakers and the windows are open to the first cool promise of fall as the sun streams in.  A gentleman across the room spontaneously falls in next to a young female nursing student and asks whether she has any questions to prepare for her test.  She asks something about edema, slightly mispronouncing it, and he kindly explains it to her.  She seems very grateful for the consult.

The walls are covered with the photography of Philip Holsinger, whom I do not know, but I think I might like to.  They are exhibition-sized, glossy, mostly black and white, high-contrast photos of everyday life in Haiti.  The one called "Madonna and Child" haunts me.  In it, a Haitian woman sits on an expanse of dark, desolate, unappealing ground with the ocean in the distance, a child in her lap. The child's face is hidden, turned toward his mother. Her arms encircle him; her body twists upward and to the right, and her graceful neck extends like a Degas sculpture.  Her face reflects a kind of resignation. She stares into the distance at -- her past? His future? I make a note to attend Holsinger's gallery exhibition to see more this afternoon.

Some days I look around and cannot believe that we live here now. After 25 years of Dan's commuting to Little Rock from Conway and being out of contact during much of the day while I was in a classroom, Dan and I now discuss his new life of teaching and we eat lunch together frequently.  We often have a house full of college students -- fourteen for lunch on Sunday. We anticipated such, and bought a house with a room for them to hang out, as much out of self-defense as hospitality.  The students seem not to care that I am not exactly Martha Stewart; they're just thankful to have a place to go.  It is low-pressure entertaining and we enjoy having them in our home.

These young people are full of infectious energy. Some are self-consciously clueless; some feel they have it all under control; some are awkward; most are reveling in these days when they are surrounded by friendship and the promise of travel abroad and the world opening up to them and them to it in turn. They are smart and funny and fresh. Each has a story; some have been coddled by helicopter parents and some have been on their own to a great extent.  But they are beginning to become what they will be, apart from Mom and Dad.

I guess we all have this in common: we don't know what we don't know.  I pray that the teachers and staff who minister to my daughter -- and it is ministry -- while she studies here will be gracious to her. I pray they will hold her to a high standard of performance, that they will call her out of the unexamined life, and will remind her that she serves a loving God who requires that she be pliable as he transforms her.

I pray that they will make her profoundly uncomfortable with the status quo from time to time, and will sensitize her to the relative luxury of her safe life.  I pray that part of her reinvention will include a mental screenshot of Holsinger's "Madonna and Child," who might someday benefit from her gifts and the gifts of other students here as they disperse into the world.  And I pray that each student who walks these sidewalks will learn more daily about the God who doesn't always tell us in advance where He's taking us, but who always walks beside us and transforms us on the journey.  Because if we are open to it, every day is a new revelation, no matter where it takes us.

To learn more about the mission of Midnight Oil, aside from being a purveyor of excellent caffeinated beverages, you may go here:  http://www.midnightoilcoffeehouse.com

The Camp Tahkodah Oasis

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord... He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.                                                                                 Jeremiah 17:7-8

Tonight I'm cleaning the dust of -- not Canaan's Land (see March 21 post "The American Taliban Prequel") -- but Camp Tahkodah -- off my feet.  This afternoon Dan and I made the mid-session  pilgrimage from our new home in Searcy north to visit the banks of Salado Creek near Floral, Arkansas.  Since our oldest daughter was in third grade, we have brought one or both of our girls to Floral each summer to spend a week or two at their happy place, owned by Harding University.


We've come a long way from that inaugural year, when I took a month to pack Claire and paid too much for cute custom camp labels from a "Going to Camp?" website, which preyed on the separation anxiety of mothers.  Now they pack themselves in about an hour, and I just throw a Sharpie in their bedroom door and remind them they have a better chance of returning with possessions people can identify;  we have to decide each year whether we actually want all those items back anyway.  Camp Tahkodah dirt is a tenacious combination of sand and construction adhesive.  Whether it is embedded in the sole of a pair of Chacos or in the seat of basketball shorts, attempting to remove it gives pause.  We do a cost-benefit analysis, and sometimes the camp dirt wins and we pitch the item, a sacrifice to the Spirit of Tahkodah.


This year, the oldest has graduated to assistant counselor, which is a fancy title for someone who is allowed to wash lots of dishes and do other menial chores for the privilege of spending a little more time there.  She is also a lifeguard, a credential she sought expressly because she wanted a little edge on getting hired.  Our youngest, age 16,  is now in the senior girls cabin, and the idea that she might not return next summer is exquisitely disconcerting when she allows herself to think about it -- so she doesn't.


When we packed up our things to move to Searcy recently, we realized the girls had accumulated a handful of Bibles engraved with "Camp Tahkodah" and signed by former director Ross Cochran, souvenirs of the Bible Bee.  Although we are not especially athletic, our family tends to do well in competitive question-answering, and our children have won a handful of times over the years.  Occasionally we've lamented that we would have traded a ready recollection of the names of the twelve tribes of Israel for a decent jump shot, but it is what it is.  God gives us each our gifts and thank heaven there's a place in the Kingdom, and at camp,  for the less coordinated.


I realized today as I stood under the pines amid a circle of log cabins, with laundry neatly hung on a clothesline beside each, that there are people from Harding who have been ministering to my grimy children in this place for nine years now.  They prayed for them before they ever arrived, cooked for them, administered first aid to them, taught them, regaled them with ridiculous songs, hiked with them, rode horses with them, canoed with them, looked out for their safety, exhorted them to good hygiene and entreated them to more effective cabin cleanup, encouraged them in competitive activities, led praise and worship for them all, and called them toward stronger relationships and to a more authentic faith. When Claire arrived at college, a Tahkodah staffer welcomed her into her home for a weekly small group study, for which Dan and I have been most thankful.  Relationships forged here as the staff invests in the lives of campers from many states will have ripples into the future of each of these sweaty young humans.

We were pleased to note as we arrived at camp last weekend that Salado Creek was still running, although many ponds and creeks in Arkansas are dry.  I was especially thankful today that, in the midst of a miserable and devastating drought, Camp Tahkodah has seen some rain, cloud cover, and merciful relief from the heat, every day this session.  But I also know that regardless of the weather, at least for my girls, Tahkodah has always been an oasis.

Here's a link to a video about her Tahkodah experience posted online by a camper last year  It gives you some idea of her feelings about camp.  Copy and past to play:  http://vimeo.com/26932911

Pantsuits, Jim Crow, and the Head that Wears the Crown

My father once admonished, “Be not the first by which the new is tried, nor the last to put the old aside.”  At thirteen, in 1973, I saw no wisdom in his explanation of why I could not wear pants instead of a dress to church, at a time when most things, including fashion, were rapidly changing for women. Dad was not generally one to defend tradition for tradition’s sake, but he was an elder in our conservative church.  For him, there were other considerations -- larger, institutional implications that took precedence over my desire to wear a “pantsuit” for worship.  Then came the day of the rare Alabama snowstorm.  Of course, young ladies couldn’t be expected to wear dresses to brave the elements, at some peril, to attend worship – and the taboo fell on that sparsely-attended Sunday morning.  And so change sometimes happens quickly, despite opposition. But sometimes not.

My father was the superintendent of education who implemented a desegregation plan in the Florence, Alabama, city schools. I recall seemingly endless weeks of tense phone calls and late-night meetings, after which he would come home and stay up long into the night, drinking coffee, taking more calls, smoking, and considering his response to the latest incident. He met with groups of African American parents, spoke at African American churches, pacified groups of white parents, advocated for the plan to the press and to neighborhood groups.  And there were threats.  At the instruction of the police, Dad wore a shoulder holster with a 38-caliber revolver under his suit, especially when he was in his office or a school building at night. A plastic bag in my dresser drawer contains a bullet that was fired at our house one night by some faceless racist who couldn't stand the change that was coming.

This week’s Arkansas Times cover photo is of Dr. George Benson, one of the early administrators of my alma mater, then called Harding College, with the headline “HARDING and the AMERICAN WAY – How a College President Stifled Desegregation.”  The headline, overprinted on a black-and-white image of Dr. Benson, jumped at me from a newspaper box at a Conway diner where I eat breakfast occasionally.  The article recounted a 1958 petition by students and faculty in support of integration.  The writer detailed Dr. Benson’s initial opposition to integration, using Benson's own notes to reconstruct his remarks to the student body. I was fascinated to read the signatures on the photograph of the petition; I was pleased and proud to recognize many names on it. Dr. Benson finally announced that Harding would integrate in 1963.

When my sister, a Harding student, married in 1976, two African American friends were attendants in her wedding, so it never occurred to me when I arrived in 1978 that it had not been long since the campus was integrated. There were any number of African American students, and interracial dating on campus. A few years ago, however, when my eleventh grade history students investigated positions on integration among various church denominations, we learned that the subject of race had been complex, contentious and divisive for many churches and related organizations and colleges.

Now – indulge me - back to the pants issue.  Let me be clear, the question of whether to accept women wearing pants to church was in no way substantively equivalent to the question of whether to include as equals in the pew, or the classroom, those whom God includes as equal in the kingdom. But contrast the kingdom with the visible church: administered as it is by fallen humans with preferences and prejudices and petty insecurities that inevitably we bring into the earthly institutions that align their mission with God’s.  Heaven help us.  My father’s response to the trouser question did have this in common with Dr. Benson's: he felt that while he was a watchman on the wall, change would not be sudden, lest it be seen as capricious. Small comfort that was to a black student whose identity was trivialized and marginalized by Jim Crow, but I believe Dad’s reasoning is relevant to this conversation.

I don't defend the indefensible when it comes to any stance against integration.  My students know that I see those who make racist comments, or who romanticize the Old South with its forced labor economy, as the kindred of those who would have tried to hurt my father back when he was integrating that school district so long ago. But part of the job of a history teacher is to caution students against judging figures from the past by the standards of the present.  We may read the documentary evidence, learn about their lives, and discuss them in the context of a greater stream of culture.  We must certainly at some level make moral judgments about their actions – but they were of their time and we are of ours. Each generation has enough for which to be accountable without inserting contemporary sensibilities into the mind of someone from the past.  It’s presumptuous.

“Be not the first by which the new is tried, nor the last to put the old aside,” may seem a recipe for mediocrity -- one that doesn’t appropriately value innovation and clings to tired ideas, or even wrongheaded ones.  It's an expression more rooted in practicality than moral ideals. We prefer to believe our leaders would, on moral issues, act without fear of consequence or reprisal, but the Arkansas Times article illustrated what has always been true: the very young can well afford to be the reckless idealists among us precisely because they are not yet responsible for our institutions. The world needs the passionate vision of young people because they still see the world with a clarity unobstructed by the pragmatic considerations that might lead an older, more powerful man to compromise something important. "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown," or words to that effect.

One last personal story: when that same man who held me back from the precipice of "slacks" at worship was young himself and had just arrived back from the war, he became the principal at the tiny school at Williford, Arkansas.  In 1951, he scheduled an exhibition basketball game between his all-white team and an all-black team.  When word got out, he was summoned to Little Rock by the director of the somewhat formidable arbiter of student extracurriculars, the Arkansas Activities Association -- where Dad was informed that he could only play teams “who were members of the all-white AAA or an equivalent association,” and the AAA definitely did not consider the black association equivalent. Dad said he thanked the man and went back to Williford and played the team anyway.  He was young then, and didn't know all the institutional considerations that were at stake, perhaps.

Dr. Benson acted much as many other men of his time who were charged with the protection and growth of institutions both large and small, from churches to country clubs to the armed forces -- he hesitated and resisted doing what was right on this issue out of fear of unpredictable consequences to the organization. Any number of progressive reformers of our nation's government, such as FDR,  likewise did not run quickly to full integration without reservation. They considered both advantageous timing and political fallout.  History is rife with examples of overt racism on the part of twentieth century American leaders, both secular and religious, who otherwise were admirable.  It’s a fact we should neither sweep under the rug nor rationalize. It’s a great tragedy of human history that segregation was played out in our nation long after the Civil War, with the blessing of our churches, and that Jim Crow was given aid and comfort by the highest court in the land. The story of the United States has always been a tale of a circuitous journey toward the ideals of the Declaration: a collective journey toward sanctification, if you will, by a host of the fallen.  

Black Flower in the White House

Condoleezza Rice spoke at Harding University last night. It was a delightful evening for the friendly, mostly Republican crowd. She expressed  gracious appreciation to the Concert Choir's performance, offered some reflections on diplomacy and governance in the post 9/11 world, and continued with some thoughts about the future of our country. She believes that our lack of success at providing effective education for our most at-risk young people may be our greatest national security risk.  She referred to her own past as a black youngster growing up in the "most segregated city in the United States" (Birmingham), and recalled that her ancestors were considered three-fifths of a person.  She used historic touchstones throughout the presentation to put current events into perspective. She is completely aware of our challenges, yet she is optimistic about the United States of America. She was self-possessed, easy, and polished. Afterward, she took some questions.

A student asked about reports that Muammar Gaddafi had a crush on her. Although no doubt she has told the story many times before, she still seemed to have an appropriately dignified yet girlish twinkle as she recounted it.

After the dismantling of the Soviet bloc, evil dictator and sponsor of terrorism and anti-American activities Gaddafi began to realize that the world was changing, and he became interested in repairing his reputation with the West. After Libya satisfied some specific requirements, the United States granted the formerly diplomatically-isolated country a visit from Secretary Rice.

When word got out that Secretary Rice was going to Libya, she began to receive calls from foreign ministers -- sort of the international diplomacy equivalent of  "Yo, Condi, you do know he has a thing for you, don't you?" Somewhat taken aback, Secretary Rice made the planned visit, which went completely according to protocol, right up until the end, when Muammar Gaddafi made his move. Imagine...

"Madame Secretary, I have a gift for you..."

"Really, General?"

"Yes.  It is a video that I made...especially for you."

"...oh...a...video, you say?"

"Yes.  Let me play it for you..."

I can only imagine her discomfiture at having to screen a video custom-made by her evil dictator/terrorist sponsor/stalker host, however, I have no doubt she did it with poise. The video turned out to be a montage of clips of her with heads of state and foreign ministers from all over the world. The kicker, however, was the soundtrack -- a song written at Gaddafi's behest by one of the premier composers of Libya. It was entitled, "Black Flower in the White House." No joke.

Condoleezza Rice has impeccable academic credentials, an impressive resume, and as the presidential campaign continues to develop, her name is mentioned frequently regarding a future either as a vice-presidential candidate or cabinet post. What is remarkable is that after last night, I felt like perhaps she might also be a pretty good friend. Someone a woman could go to lunch with, and discuss not only her work and her family,  but perhaps have a laugh at her authoritarian dictator-stalker-guy. I really liked her.

I think Gaddafi was probably right. She totally deserved the creepy honor he tried to pay her. I say let's get the Black Flower back to the White House again. Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of Education.