An Open Letter to our Candidates

Dear Men and Women Who Seek to Become Our President,

Together with millions of people here in America and around the globe, I watched Wednesday night's debate.  When the Democratic candidates go at it, we will be watching you as well.  We are listening and listening hard, hoping to hear true leadership and reasonable objectivity in the midst of all the posturing and hyperbole.

I am writing to you, while you are stumping around the country in this crazy carnival we have come to know as the campaign trail, to give you a tiny little incomplete and imperfect picture of a few of the many varied lives I came into contact with the day after the debate--all of which you will impact as our President.

Before 8:00 am a smart, hardworking plumber who started and runs his own business was at our door, part in hand, ready to fix one of those things we take for granted that suddenly become an emergency.

In preparation for traveling out of town, I went to get my low riding tires aired up.  The young man who helped me bore a tattoo on the inside of his forearm: "Blessed are the peacekeepers..."  We talked briefly and I found that he had been in the Army--deployed to Baghdad.

By 10:00 I had visited with someone who had watched her high-achieving, white collar first husband succumb to drug addiction.  She had managed to escape what finally became a dangerous situation, and had raised his nephews because no one else was capable of doing so.  She, too, had built a small business, as a single mom, and it is thriving today.

Spoon Tracker - Etsy

I ate lunch with a couple, married for 63 years, who had also watched the debate.  They had listened closely and spoke carefully, thoughtfully, about their concerns, about their hopes for this country they have worked in and loved for 80 years.

Our waitress at lunch was excited to tell us about an upcoming trip to California.  She is working double shifts to save her money for this long-planned journey, as well as to pay her regular bills.  When I congratulated her on saving up before she left, she was proud to say all her bills would be paid and that she wouldn't be dinging up a big credit card balance, thanks to all the extra hours she is so wisely putting in.

We visited with a small shop owner on the square, an artist and entrepreneur who also has a deep love of history.  She expressed her concern for what seems to be the looming obsolescence of history, her worry that young generations of students have little historical context for their lives.  And, of course, we spoke about the debate and each of you.

Others joined in the conversation--a 59-year old employee of the shop and a sales rep, making his rounds across the state in pursuit of business. They, too, had watched you and your colleagues debate.  They, too, had interesting insight and prespectives to share.

Later I heard stories about an upcoming funeral visitation for a 28-year old young man who had been killed in a mining accident and of an area farmer who is deeply grateful for the men who come from Mexico to work on his farm every year--men he has come to know well and to respect.

That evening I went to a movie--the first I had been to in my town since the recent theatre shootings, a fact which never occurred to me until a young girl with huge eyes said, "I'm sorry but I have to look in your bag.  Can you move that stuff around?  I'm not allowed to touch anything."  My first thought was darn, no more sneaking in dollar store candy; when the real reason finally dawned on me I was saddened, not because of contraband candy, but because of the insanity of gunfire at the movies.

My post-debate day ended with gratitude for the police and for the midnight voice on the end of the line when someone I knew needed 911 because, for the third time in a week, an unwanted and unknown person was on the front porch, about to come in.


Here you have an incomplete sampling of some of my encounters with the citizens of this country, all in one day--the day after the debate.  Average,  fairly normal interactions with people many of you might think of as average.  In some ways, we are.

Most of you are working hard, out on the campaign trail--raising money, talking until you can talk no more, eating bad food and probably not sleeping enough.  Missing your families and worrying about what your own future, either in the White House or outside of it, will hold.

Just remember, please, while you're at it: there's a lot of living going on out here.  Good people doing their jobs and paying their bills and taking care of each other.  What you do and who you are matters to each and every one of them.

Sincerely,

Portia

Bright Shining as the Sun

Wednesday night in the south is church night--the most casually unscientific observer would know this fact by simple osmosis.  Church parking lots are full, church windows ablaze, perhaps church doors are propped open.  Wednesday night is church night--I've heard and said it so often it sounds like the chorus of an old familiar hymn. 

In Charleston, S.C., church night became the night for slaughter.

We raised our kids in an old, downtown Methodist church, known for its faithful respect of Wesleyan ritual, for its heritage, for its beautiful building, all of which I, too, enjoyed.  One of the high points of my personal liturgical year during my time in this congregation was Ash Wednesday.  Every year, on this one special day, we gathered together with the congregation and choir of Taylor Chapel AME Church to usher in the season of Lent.

We shared our supper with our crosstown friends and then we all trooped into the sanctuary, groups of two or three or four trickling in from the Fellowship Hall, talking and laughing, perhaps hugging when we saw a familiar face.  Then the beautiful and talented voices of Taylor Chapel shared their gift of music with us, and what a gift it was.  Their pastor blessed us with his gift of words.  Then we all lined up, together, and received the mark of an ashen cross on our foreheads.

I will always remember those Ash Wednesday services--no matter how delinquent my Sunday attendance might have been, I tried to show up on that special night, and I left better for it.

Today Taylor Chapel AME sent out a crosstown call for all who mourn Charleston to join them in prayer.  I went, and, once again, I left better for it.

We sat shoulder to shoulder on church pews and listened as three men of God tried to find words for our ears and for our hearts.  Pastor John Lee of Mt. Zion Baptist prayed a prayer that rippled through every single listener as he lifted up the lost, their families, their church, as he prayed there would be no more copycats driven to mimic evil, and then a sudden stillness fell across us all as he prayed for the shooter.  I felt every mind and heart in that congregation turn inward as we challenged ourselves to that tallest and most difficult of Christian tenets.

Pastor Jay Smith of State Street Methodist prayed with a voice thick with emotion, beginning in the painfully still relevant words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and moving seamlessly into his own supplication--for hope, for peace, for us to help one another.

Pastor Joshua Hale of Taylor Chapel looked out upon us and said, "Isn't this the church that Christ intended--brothers and sisters of all races together?"  His question was answered with a chorus of amens.  

Pastor Hale called the names of the murdered.  He gave their ages and a few brief details about them, and as he lit a candle for each, they and their lives, their loss, became real to each of us.  The room was heavy with the grief of nine families, of a church, of a town, we could only begin to imagine.

We joined hands, pew to pew, around the entire room, and we raised our voices together in a shared prayer we all knew by heart, the Lord's own prayer, and those words "thy will be done" were perhaps more difficult to utter on this night.  

Before we left Pastor Hale let us know that the good people of Emanuel AME would receive copies of the register each of us had signed, so they would know that on this night 100+ souls were with them.

Tonight we lit a candle.  Our candle says to evil you will not win.  We will not speak your name because you deserve no name.  We will speak the names of the lost and we will remember them.  

And let it be known that on Thursday, June 18, 2015, in Bowling Green, Kentucky, hope lit up the stained glass windows at Taylor Chapel AME.  It's a hope that can light up the world.