One Hundred Years Ago Today

Parades are nothing new in this country. We've been lining up and marching to call attention to a cause or to celebrate every occasion from "Clean Up, Paint Up, Fix Up Day" in Monticello in the 60s to Homecoming, St. Paddy's Day and Easter parades. How we loved the Christmas parades with majorettes in white fur-trimmed maroon velvet uniforms and Miss Hospitality and the Farm Bureau queens waving from a convertible!

But long before those days, there was another parade on a chilly March 3. 

On this very day in 1913, thousands of spunky women who had traveled from across the country staged a major march on Washington D.C. Timed to occur on the day before the presidential inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, all eyes were on the nation's capitol. I can't help but note that the city would have been decked out with bunting and flags and grandstands already in place as these women seized the stage appropriating some perfectly good decorations for the cause--always a plus when we are resourceful with our decor budget.

Thousands stood and watched in top coats and hats as the event was both ballyhooed and heralded depending on one's point of view or gender. The New York Times' description of the opening tableau lifted the production to great heights of artistry and pageantry. We do not have tableaus anymore, do we? The photo brings to mind Mayor Shinn's wife's contribution to the festivities in the park in The Music Man set in River City, Iowa in 1912. What is a big shindig without a patriotic tableau? We still model our Olympic opening ceremonies after such a scene complete with Grecian drapes and laurel wreaths.

Then the marchers began their walk down Pennsylvania Avenue arranged in regiments by state.  Crowds of mostly men poured into the streets. History records that the men behaved badly.

They ridiculed the women with their absurd notions of voting rights and personhood under the law. Perhaps they thought their world was turning upside down with the prospect of women continuing to demand the right to vote which everyone knew could never happen or else what would become of our society? We as humans do some despicable things when threatened, or when our perceived status is threatened. We are not at our best.

Photos show the crowds pressing in on the orderly marchers until they block the street. The jeers and taunts continue. Soon the tripping, groping and physical contact get violent. Many are injured and taken away in ambulances. Others are jailed and charged, but those who vote make the rules. The progression is predictable.

The actual accounts of those who backed this cosmic shift in the American experiment should be required reading for a generation who does not even bother to cast a ballot in a presidential election. It represents nothing to them; they have no skin in the game. We have it too easy.

There is no one left who remembers this day in history.

The same will be said of everything else in our lives at one time, and we do not live to preserve our own personal history for its own sake. We are just passing through. But if we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.  And so we do.

When we glance at the photos, we can offer a pause of appreciation, a word of gratitude from the daughters 100 years later of those courageous women who risked mockery and scorn that we might be able to walk up to that voting machine in our precinct and touch the start button.

It seems so simple now, but nothing hard-won is ever simple. Or cheap. Someone always pays the price.

What we now know as the 19th Amendment took 41 years to pass after it was introduced in 1878, and the women who introduced it were white-haired after working tirelessly on what we could be tempted to see as a mere footnote in a history book: women's suffrage. Then I think of the ones who wanted to join the throng, to put their conscience above their comfort but were intimidated into silence. Do we do it still?

Is there something you and I commit our lives to with the same passion, the same zeal and commitment? Are we called to a mission larger than ourselves and our little corner of Google earth? Let us keep asking that question and seek discernment. May God grant wisdom even as God gives dreams for each season of life and the courage to stand firm in pursuit of them for the Kingdom.

It is not just the law that governs our lives as believers, but the high call of God to love others, to practice justice and to show mercy. It takes both courage and humility to live into our faithful witness as we encounter needs of others. May God grant us both.





photos found in tribute on theatlantic.com with credits to:

Related links and information

Suffrage Centennial Celebration - Events organized by the American Association of University Women

Marching For The Vote: Remembering The Woman Suffrage Parade Of 1913 - Library of Congress

Women's suffrage in the United States - Wikipedia entry

Women's Suffrage Parade of 1913 - Wikipedia entry

Lessons from a Glass Jar

One of my earliest experiences in prayer occurred fifty years ago today and includes the governor’s mansion, Miss America, and a mason jar.

February was Heart Fund month, and the race was on all over Mississippi to see who could raise the most money for the heart association. Each of the girls—first grade through high school--had a jar to collect donations.  If you grew up in a small town, you may remember the sight: mayonnaise and mason jars adorned with valentines and photos of the girls placed alongside the cash registers in the Western Auto, drug store and grocery stores – prime real estate! I was only in the third grade, but I launched my campaign to win.

 My parents would not let me put out my jar in town much to my dismay; I was left to earn money from chores and to collect spare change at the end of the day. The teacher tallied totals on the blackboard daily, and the handwriting on the wall told me I was in trouble.

As February 14 drew near, my anxiety grew. The prize was to be Queen of
the Class. The Overall Heart Fund Queen for the town received the grand prize: a trip to the
Governor’s Mansion in Jackson where all the statewide queens would gather for lunch. The rumor spread quickly that they had a solid gold bathroom.

How significant was this dream to be queen? Princess costumes still sell wildly today, but this was back in 1963. Mary Ann Mobley and Linda Lee Mead had won back-to-back Miss America as Miss Mississippi. Even as a third grader, I was impressed. To add fuel to the queenly fire, I had just been on the front page of The Daily Mississippian seated in the lap of my aunt who had been crowned Miss University. I was star struck among those glamorous girls. Surely there was a crown in my future!

On February 13, I had assessed the class totals and knew that--barring a miracle--I would not win. The night before the big day I prayed my little seven-year-old heart out, asking God to please let my daddy put a twenty dollar bill in that jar before morning. Nobody would come close to that. I knew he could do it. I believed.

I awoke the next morning with eager anticipation, and there sat my jar: no twenty. Didn’t my parents want me to win? It was within their power to make it happen. It would have been so easy, I thought.

No, I didn’t win--not even the top of my little third grade class.

 At the end of the day, however, I do remember how pleased my father was to learn that Lucy, a high school senior had won. Lucy was one of his favorite patients, an irrepressible young woman stricken with polio who moved through the halls of the school with her aluminum crutches.

When I voiced my disappointment – okay, I was seven - my father put his arms around me and hugged me close offering both comfort and wisdom I was unable to perceive then. He had a different perspective and helped me frame the disappointing experience: “Marita, you’ll have many chances to go to Jackson in your life, and you'll see the governor’s mansion; but Lucy never dreamed she’d have a day like this.”

The town of Monticello proclaimed a day for Queen Lucy with her picture on the front page of The Lawrence County Press.

I have reflected on what I saw as unanswered prayer and learned a lesson from that little heart fund jar. Sometimes our prayers are like my childhood prayer:  “God, you can do this! It is not too hard for you.”

In some ways we still ask for the thing we think would put us over the top. It may not be “please put a twenty in the heart fund jar”, but fill in the blank for our own personal crisis. We tell God precisely how to fix a person or situation. And just like my lesson 50 years ago, we still don’t get what we ask for.

Does that mean we didn’t ask with the correct incantation to make our prayer acceptable to God? Perhaps proper verbal tweaking likely was not and is not the missing link. Sometimes what we desire just does not come to pass.   Prayer is one of life’s mysteries.

 From my limited point of view, the answer looked easy; but my parents had a different perspective--a bigger picture in mind--and the quick fix I wanted was not the best for me.

When we are in the midst of true disappointment now as adults, facing times of real anxiety, we implore God through prayer. We give thanks for what we call answered prayer when what we seek comes to pass, but the place of anguish is when we do not get what we want. We may not see a way out barring a miracle, so we ask God in the only way we know how: pouring our hearts out earnestly and sometimes begging for the solution we seek. God is big enough to take it all and sift it lovingly. Our God remains steadfast to meet our deepest needs, though help may come in times and ways we cannot anticipate. Yet, God is trustworthy.

And my father was right, as always.

Several parents who heard this story recently said indignantly, “I can’t believe your parents did not let you win! What was wrong with them?” I think that is another difference in parenting in the sixties and today, but that is another topic.

We have taught our children what might be dubbed the gospel according to the Rolling Stones:
“You can’t always get what you want….but you get what you need.”  Put another way, “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” 2 Corinthians 9:8

Dream Again and Deeper

"For broken dreams, the cure is dream again...and deeper."  ~ C.S. Lewis


Some would tell us that dreaming is idle; dreaming is wasting time.

"Stop daydreaming," we hear from a distant classroom memory as the teacher scolded disengaged students. Yet, dreaming has a hallowed place among the mature and serious just the same. Dreaming  generates within us a quickness, a lightness of spirit in spite of age or infirmity. There can be an invisible quality to dreaming that greatly enhances our days.

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on..." Shakespeare wrote on The Tempest.

Never stop dreaming.

Wake up a tired dream. Dust off an old one. Seek a fresh vision for this present season of life and pray for an ability to imagine our lives invigorated by a dream. Let it bubble up. Watch it intersect our lives from unexpected places. Seek it diligently. Prepare to see something new, and give thanks.

Never stop dreaming.


Nunquam subsisto somniare

Jamais arrêter de rêver

Mai smettere di sognare

никогда не прекращайте мечтать

Anyway you say it, the key is to keep a dream alive.

Stay plugged into a source that feeds us with life-giving energy when much of the world around us would drain us and leave us aching for more. More stuff. More time. More money. More influence. More and enough to stockpile, if we could, but we cannot. Time is like manna: we only have enough for this day to use wisely.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. James 1:5


 photo credit: Prentice Stabler

Predictable routines leave little time for unexpected sightings of glory

Was that you, Lord, in the lady with the purple coat?


She wore purple with a red cap shielding her from the rain. Robed in purple she was, topped with crimson: a familiar combination hearkening from the past but hardly a royal appearance today.

She hobbled clutching her cane in her right hand and pushing a three-wheeled cart with her left, wobbling upright with each step with her zipped bag swinging in curious balance as a pendulum from the elbow. She looked right at home leaving the bus station or making her way through an airport terminal, but not here—not crossing Meadowbrook Road on East frontage road at I 55. She held my gaze as I waited at the light.

We say we are watchful, looking for opportunities to serve and to be mindful of your Presence among us, Lord, but are we really? We usually see what we are expecting to see while on our way to work on a busy morning.  Predictable routines leave little time for unexpected sightings of glory.

Then again, you show up at unexpected places. I heard myself ask aloud to no one present, “Was that you, Lord?”

Her gait told me she needed that walking stick. She caught my eye and halted my heart for a moment, but did I stop to pick her up, to see if I could help? No. She was a stranger, and I was on my way to somewhere else.

Aren't we always on the way to somewhere else when you break through our day and beckon for our attention? We need you to make it clear, Lord, if we are to step aside and see a great sight. I have this rule, you see, a rule that I do not pick up strangers. I'm a little bit afraid of taking them into my car for some perfectly good reasons you would understand. But when we need to set aside our closely-held rules, we need you to make it clear, else we just go on about our business, living by our own rules--kind of like I just did today when I saw her brown skin glistening wet and the morning rain on her purple coat.

This mental conversation filled the space of a glimpse, just the time it takes for a light to turn from red to green, but a glimpse is all we have sometimes, is it not?

 Just a brush with glory. 

A brief visitation. 

A few seconds should be enough when we walk closely enough with you to recognize you when you have a task for us, to be your hands and feet in the world today to relieve suffering, to lighten another's load. But we can be so encumbered with our own cares, as I was this morning, that we cannot see another's.

We may miss the message.

We may not see you when you show up at times and places we are not expecting.

And I was strongly impressed with the reminder to look for you in the faces of the hurting, the aged, the lonely. The glimpse turned me inside out. My little morning sadness about other things vanished in a breath--the breath that I took in as I asked aloud, “Was that you, Lord?"

You give us our next breath, and you take it away. You take it away with beauty, nature and music, and you take it away with pain. And in that split second when we inhale silently and take in the sight before us, you remind us you are present.

So, yes, perhaps that was you, Lord, not transfigured at all but mysteriously present nonetheless in the realigning of my thoughts, the shuffling of my priorities so that I might refocus and see more fully all about me.

Later my friend Betty told me of an auto accident at County Line Road where a woman had been walking in the midst of busy traffic. An ambulance’s blue lights held waiting cars at bay while an upturned cart was spinning silently at the edge of the road. I wondered if I had seen her earlier, but I was on my way to somewhere else.

On the way to somewhere else: that’s where much of life happens. Lord, speak to my heart. Interrupt my day with ordinary sights and sounds so that I do not miss an opportunity to serve, to learn.

“To you O Lord, I lift my soul. Show me your paths and teach me to follow; guide me by your truth and instruct me.” Psalm 25: 1, 4.

January Days: New Beginnings in 2013

"To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. 

To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. 

But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.

It is what we need more than anything. 
 

It liberates us from pretense; humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us."

~ Tim Keller

[emphasis mine]

And so I'm thinking.....

Liberation:

Freedom from posturing and pretending.

Always comes at a price.

 Humility:

Cannot occupy the same space alongside pride.

Pride consumes all the air.

Something's gotta give.

To be known and loved as we are--not as someone else wishes we were--is a rare experience in our world.

 

That kind of love fortifies us for the task at hand, for the tasks of a lifetime. We dare to do great things because we are not afraid.

We are not afraid of failure. We are not afraid of losing the love we once thought we had to earn. Because, we reason, if we had to earn it, we could also forfeit it in one fell, disapproving swoop.  

Fear of failure holds us hostage no more; it holds no power to control or to manipulate.

And we dare to do small things with great love, as Mother Teresa suggested, which is no less bold than attempting greatness from the outset.

Love always liberates, never enslaves.
 
We need that kind of fortifying power, that kind of strengthening of our souls when life threatens to destroy that which we thought would stand firm. For some, that means we witness the deterioration of marriages, homes, relationships, health. A picture of glacial calving comes to mind with its constantly changing state of an icy coastline. Calving may occur bit by bit or in tumultuous crashing, but few are spared the changing shape of things to come in this world.

We make life plans. 

Think things are settled for a season. 

But when one thing changes, as my mother says, it changes everything. Life unravels around the edges first because that's where it's most vulnerable. Unbound cloth, as it were.

We come to find that confidence placed in anything other than the love and grace of God will not always endure. But a life of faith bound up in this powerful love and held together in grateful communion with the God who will never let us go and does not leave us alone does not merely endure--thank you, Jesus and Mr. Faulkner--it prevails.

Thanks be to God.